The Sword of Humanity
by Shadenight123
Summary: Humanity's first contact was with a Hiver Dreadnought. Now, as Humanity is sieged on all sides years after first contact with Citadel Species, Commander John Shepard is tasked with a mission that will force cooperation with the Council to uncover the attackers of Eden Prime. Fighting through hardships, will he understand the aliens, or will he hold himself true to Solforce ideals?
1. Prologue

_The Sword of Humanity._

_The Shield of Humanity._

_The Guardian of Humanity._

_That is the Director._

_Never forget that, Jack. Never forget what I entrust to you...Make. Them. Pay._

Director Jack Harper lit his cigar and took a slow, calm puff. The nicotinic pleasure did little to soothe his nerves as his gaze went to the reports on his desk. The dying words of the previous Director of Solforce still ringed in his ears even then, even after all those years. One of the reports was prominent on the pile, a black leather-bound stack —the only one of such a type.

Black Twenty-Five.

The dossier was open, its papers scattered and littering his mahogany desk. Good old wood, not the bio-synthetic crap that was spat out on an hourly basis. Still, the Director of Solforce recalled how short-lived his awe after his desk had been in the following minute since his coming to power. That had been the day Black Twenty-One had effectively entered the field.

Earth had been ravaged.

Torn asunder, destroyed, the debris scattered across the universe.

One billion people upon Earth had died screaming as the Black Twelve and the Black Seventeen had crossed their paths upon their bright blue planet.

Thankfully, both had turned against one another in the aftermath.

The survivors had been picked up as the two titans of space had battled, sending laser beams, their thousands of drones, their ancient weapons at one another. By the time the Black Fleets returned, the grievously wounded Black Twelve was once more fully operational…having feasted upon their own planet.

And then the Black Twelve had _left_ —gone somewhere else, not caring the slightest for the billions killed.

Jack Harper took another deep breath as the thick smoke rolled within his mouth for a moment —he was clenching his left fist tightly, like every time he remembered that day. He exhaled the cloud, the grey fumes dispersing into the air as a holographic panel popped open in front of him. The camera from the corner of the room shone brightly, forming a tridimensional map of the known galaxy the next second.

Earth was a glaring hole in the map, which was calibrated to show the position of humankind's cradle at its center. The Milky Way's arms turned ever slowly, as the Node-Lines shown by the SIGINT operatives glowed a light golden color.

Jack Harper's right index finger gently tapped at the planet in question —Eden Prime— and breathed slowly. A strange device of unknown origins had been found by the Colonizing party sent to occupy the world in question. The Black Section had curtained the entire area the next instant.

It was sort of ironic that he, the Director of Solforce, had no idea what the Black Section was doing…except for the money rerouted to their 'Special Project' on researching the thing.

He nudged the map to move back from its zoom on the planet —more pressing matters required his full attention— and as he settled on the Solforce-Hiver border, he couldn't help but grind his teeth in frustration. The Black Twelve had outright devastated the military production of Solforce, and if that had not been enough, its passage throughout the human-controlled systems had given a beachhead to the Hivers.

The North quadrant of the galaxy was filled with various colors, each showcasing the Special Sections' own banner as they battled the enemies of Solforce.

Red Section brought the battle to the Tarkas.

Blue Section fought the Liir-Zuul.

Purple Section held the line against the Suu'lka hordes.

Yellow Section desperately tried to regain the captured worlds from the Hivers.

Silver Section tore through the thick metal skins of the Loa.

Cerulean Section was in charge of keeping the Morrigi at bay.

The fact that said empires were splintered and battling each other, just as their own colonies rebelled…that probably showed how grave the situation was. Solforce still held itself together because of a simple fact.

_Earth was gone_.

Just like with the Hiver's first contact, humanity had rediscovered its military past, so too with the destruction of their planet…humanity had found back its unity throughout the stars.

Colonies had fallen in line, children no older than eleven asking to be outfitted with psionics and cybernetics enhancements while their proud parents enlisted together with them. Replicants technology —which had been the source of many protests in the unpopulated colonies— was now seen as the apex of what humanity could do.

Soldiers created by nothing more than giant pools of dead humans, molded back from their basic forms into new corps. The clay was the corpses of the deceased, the new sculptures created by them the only reason humanity's lack of manpower had literally disappeared.

The Universe was at war, Solforce could either claim the momentum of unity or refuse it, but one thing was clear to Jack Harper's mind as he ignored the dossier on his desk.

He didn't have the time to deal with Black Twenty-Five.

Black Section would have to take care of it by itself.

"Message from the Council," an electronic voice piped in from his terminal, as Jack gritted his teeth in frustration while accepting the call. He supposed all the past directors would be spitting upon his head, if only they knew what he had done to guarantee Humanity a fighting chance.

The hologram of the council appeared on screen, as the three bizarre looking aliens seemed to be eying him with the same level of trust you would give to a hungry Varren.

Humanity was in need of worlds, and the Council Space had worlds, rocks that they couldn't colonize and were more than willing to part with. Small asteroids called 'planets' maybe, but every one of those rocks meant resources. Resources humanity could use, and needed to use.

Eden Prime had been a lucky streak. It had become a nightmare the moment a Prothean beacon had been found. He couldn't understand the aliens' fascination with the things. They were relics of an age past, technologically advanced and what-not.

Instead of studying them, analyzing them to pick them apart…the Council copied them, sometimes with even worst results than the Zuul's artistic sense.

At least the Zuuls had a genetically engineered reason to be ferocious clawed apes.

"Councilors," he answered with a barely clipped tone. "What help do you require?"

"We do not call to ask for help, Director." The Turian's tone was clipped and venomous. "The Council can take care of itself."

"Then I should remove the patrols guarding you from the Terminus Systems?" he replied calmly.

"You are paid most handsomely for that protection!" the councilor snarled back. "You were given permission to colonize all non-garden world planets in the area!"

"Rocks and asteroids mostly," the Director pointed out. "But you still have not answered me: why are you calling?"

"It has come to our attention," Tevos began then. "That you have found a Prothean beacon on the garden-world of Eden Prime."

"Your special forces paid for that in blood," Jack hissed back. "I suppose you will be making reparations?"

"We have a treaty about informing each other of potential Prothean relics, correct?" Tevos remarked. "I am sure you were just about to uphold your side of the deal and inform us."

"Of course I was, but it is out of my hands now," he remarked. "Black Section has full control of the operation."

"Still, we would like to investigate it all the same," Tevos supplied. "Black Section will not impede us, if we come with your authority would they?"

"They would not," Jack admitted. "But Black Section will only obey a direct Human superior, no matter the circumstances. That is how it was built, and that is how it will keep on being. Ambassador Donnel Udina will bring one of your specialists on site...considering the state of the colony, he or she might have a rough time on it," he supplied.

"We know the way your colonists treat the races of the council, Director. The fact you do not seem worried about bringing an end to this only goes a long way in telling us how you view other races."

"I am the Director of Solforce, councilors. I speak for Humanity. The Dreadnought _Deep Darkness_ will be dispatched to take your selected specialist aboard, which will not be a Turian as per the treaty." The Turian councilor snarled at those words. "Furthermore, he or she will be unarmed, and must declare whether he or she holds any biotic powers or potential. He or she will not furthermore stray from the areas the Commander of the ship grants her passage in, and I hope I make myself clear that should any plans concerning the Dreadnoughts' inner working be revealed, we would be extremely displeased."

"Nothing new. We already agreed on this." The Salarian councilor remarked. "Archeologist Liara T'soni, daughter of Matriarch Benezia, will be the specialist. She is an Asari. Biotic powers known and common to all Asaris."

The Director merely nodded. It was always an Asari they sent. Salarians couldn't help but explore, question, and more problematically…_discover_. Asari knew where the line stood, and the mature ones knew not to cross it.

"Very well," the Director acknowledged. "The Dreadnought will arrive in three weeks from Eden Prime to the Citadel: have your _specialist_ ready by then."

"It would take considerably less if you activated the Mass Relays," the Turian councilor snapped. "Your empire is cut off, should the Council races wish to assist you."

"The only thing the Council races wish from us is our secrets," Jack said while barely restraining his anger. "Do not forget," he added graciously. "We are the one granting you peace."

"Because you tore apart the Turian fleet!"

"Enough, Sparatus." Tevos chided the Turian councilor. "We will contact you again soon, Director."

"I am eager," the tone was drawled and sarcastic, "for another chat."

The Councilor holograms disappeared, but Jack Harper didn't move yet.

Five minutes later, and he re-opened communications with the Salarian councilor.

"Potential chances to reacquire STG members?"

"Three of the STG saw nothing, the two who did see something were eliminated," he remarked calmly.

"Members of STG forces still combat capable?"

"Two, one lost a limb. He is stable, but will most likely need prosthetics," the Director answered back with a scoff.

"Understood. One planet system with asteroid belt?"

"Size of the asteroid belt?"

"Circles the system."

"Acceptable. They will return through our usual and common channel."

"So will the deeds to the system," then just as the Salarian's councilor disappeared, the Asari one appeared.

"Director," Tevos began. "The specialist in question is the daughter of Matriarch Benezia, an influential Asari within Thessia's circles and the surrounding systems. It is imperative she is well treated and protected."

"The usual price stands," he replied smoothly.

"I will speak with the Consort and see if she has any dirt on the opponents in the list," the Councilor murmured. "Lacking that, two thousand tons of Element Zero will be delivered to the marked trade station in four days."

"Good," the Director nodded. "I will make sure she will be treated with all the due respect."

The Asari councilor disappeared again, leaving the Director to slowly smother the burning cigar in his hand against the ashtray.

Jack Harper exhaled slowly, and as he closed his eyes he was brought back to a memory, one a long, long time before all of this.

"_Sir? They wished to surrender…why did we shoot?"_

"_Because the only good alien is a dead one son, and the Hivers have to pay. They all have to pay."_

And they would all pay.

The beeping red of the console brought him back to the present, to his duties and to the galaxy's map. Stretched over the entirety of the Spiral, over countless planets and suns, the Solforce Empire stood mighty and locked into a never ending battle…

But not for long.

No, not for long.

He scanned the planets, his gaze settling upon the Terminus System. A Batarian incursion into their system? If only he had some hint on where the slavers held their ships or their base…

The lack of planets and systems prevented the Solforce Ships from exploring the giant asteroid belt and even the Police Cutters on patrol could do little, past their autonomy. The planet was easily protected however, and as the alarm died down the Director of Solforce groaned.

Another flash of red, near the Hiver borders. Soon that was followed by one more, near the Loa sector.

Within moments, peace was shattered as he began once more his work as the Sword, the Shield and the Guardian of Humanity.

For he was the Director of Solforce, and he had one purpose above all: humanity's survival.

"_Per Ardua, ad Astra._"

Through hardships…the stars.

**Author's notes**

**ME crossovered with SOTS 1&2. **

**Because I can.**

**Since I'm not a fan of VS or 'mega-tons-kilo-tons' or 'technical battles' I'm putting it out now: I'm writing this as a story, not a collection of data on which ship defeats which. If you want to be nit-picky, then please send me the Data through a pm or hand over the specs of the ships. Consider that Humanity has Leviathans, but they are extremely costly and in low numbers. (One per border) And to maintain them their colonies are held at a 8-level tax rate…to barely end in balance at the end of the year. 'Morals' are unaffected because of the Earth Destruction, for the moment.**

**The reason 'Humanity' didn't destroy the Council is because they would have still done damage, and as it is Solforce is walking a thin line between 'holding' against the old enemies and 'managing' the new resources and colonies (who are extremely costly as you can consider them size 3-4 planets who are in need of terraforming and overharvest)**

**Turns are 'flexible'. Deep space travel from point A to B might take weeks. In System flight is actually hour-based. Research is 'monthly' or 'yearly'. I'm not delving much on the mechanics, just the story part.**

**This is just the prologue. The rest of the chapters will be in 'John Shepard' view-point.**

**As per SOTS wiki, every family has at least one sibling (counting to ten being the average actually) due to 'population needs in the workforce' meaning that it is perfectly 'canon' in here for Shepard to have something like five or six brothers/sisters. **

**One or two might pop up, just saying.**

**Purpose of the story:**

**Write a 'discovering' Shepard who goes from Xenophobic to accepting of aliens. Knowing my muse, this will most likely derange in pain, angst and what-not.**

**You are warned.**


	2. First Contacts

The Sword of Humanity

Chapter One

Commander John Shepard hated waking up in subspace.

Truth be told, he hated knowing he had gone to bed the night before, dreamt, and could hold no visual recollection of what he had dreamt about. He knew it was for his own good. PTSD patients showed clear signs of improvement, when the causes of their sicknesses were literally slammed in the corner of their own brains with a mixture of pills and therapy sessions.

He still hated waking up in subspace, because subspace was wrong to him.

The Solforce ships closed all possible views of the exterior with blast shields that usually came down only during battles. Implicitly, every Commander worth his salt knew to close the blast shields if he or she wanted to avoid having the entire crew rebelling.

Specters weren't a pretty view in the subspace. What with their gazes and their hateful whispers and moans…not that they could actually whisper. Specters couldn't do much —just tear your soul apart as if they were spoiled children and you were the candy— but what they could do was unnerve you to the point where you'd rather take a gun and shoot your own head, rather than let them win.

Some speculated the Leviathan-01 had been stolen by them.

Others claimed that being taken was as good as becoming one of them in the long run.

In the end, as long as the blast shields were down, nobody cared.

The little thing everyone knew, but like him chose to refuse to acknowledge was that blast shields were useless in avoiding the Specters. If the things could actually sense them, or see them…

Then they would pass through the thick steel plates and claim their lives. Reinforced sections or not, nothing but energy could harm those foul eldritch things.

His digital clock still showed him the local Earth time of 3:23 A.M. He could try and catch some more wink eye, but he knew he'd just fall into the usual cycle of sleep-erase the nightmare-wake up again to see the sun rising at four in the morning.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

"EDI?" he queried to the ship. Well, the Slave-Ai that belonged within the ship. "Who's awake?"

"Flight Lieutenant Moreau is awake and discussing Salarian sleep-cycles with Corporal Jenkins. They are…cracking jokes."

"Anyone else?"

"Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko is currently visiting Chief Medical Officer Dr. Karin Chawkas for nightly migraines."

John closed his eyes for a moment, before exhaling out the breath he had been holding in his throat.

"Someone who is alone?"

"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams is composing a message to her family. The message is being scanned and found to contain no traces of compromising information for the Solforce system."

"Maybe someone alone and not busy?" he added then.

"We are sorry John: there is no-one that matches said profile. I am however free with some sub-routines in case you desire a Chess game."

"No thanks EDI," John replied. "I'll feed the fishes or the hamster."

The Commanding Officer's room was, in a single word, cramped.

The five per five meters cubicle was more than what anyone else on the Dreadnought had as personal space, so he wasn't really complaining. His bed occupied a corner, the other side of the wall holding a small aquarium with a delicate breed of Goldfishes.

A 'breed' that could survive nuclear fallout, a lack of food for three months, and even some of the worst sicknesses that could be taken as an animal species. What was amusing was that they still held the uncanny ability to appear in the mornings with their stomachs flipped upside down and dead.

It had to be something within their very genetic code: goldfishes always died when you weren't watching them.

He had a veritable swarm of them, the only other privilege of the Commanding Officer. The upper echelons of Solforce supposed that having the lives of other a thousand men on your shoulders was enough of a reason to grant some…company, to the men or women serving as their Officers.

"Broadside, Shotgun, Rifle," he began tapping gently on the glass panel in the spot of every single one of the goldfishes, as he spoke their names with fondness. "Grenade, Gauss Cannon, Mass Driver, X-Ray, Rocket Launcher and Machinegun," he finished satisfied with himself. "You all ready for your fill, boys?"

The fact none answered back to him didn't bother John.

He hadn't wanted to _buy_ the talking breed of fishes because constantly hearing 'hungry' or 'I pooped' lowered his…his fascination in them.

The moment the automated feeding system began to work, he turned to head towards his private shower. He knew that by the time he would actually emerge for breakfast, the rest of the troops would be either running for the ship's showers or running their exercises in the Virtual Reality modules.

There wasn't much else to do while in Subspace.

No contacts with the outside, no way to know whether they'd end up in a pacified system or a warring one. Still, serving on the Vacuum forces didn't mean having only quite a bit of downtime for the soldiers —it also meant having to spend much of the time inside the Cryo-units. The ground forces always were on rotations. Every week, a team de-froze as another entered the sleep.

In case of boarding attempt, they would all be unfrozen, but otherwise having over eight-hundred men and women running around a two-hundred seventy-nine meter long ship wasn't really the ideal thing. Sure, the ship was also forty-three meters wide and fifty-two tall, but it didn't change the fact that sometimes…you just needed the space.

He walked out in his Solforce Uniform, with the black short mantle on the back of his red suit. His medals chinked one against the other on his chest, the ceremonial sword hanging loosely at his belt. His left gloved hand held over the sword as he passed through the corridors and the hallways towards the forward command bridge.

"Commander on deck!" one of the attendants snapped as he walked through the hydraulic-operated doors, standing to attention.

The rest of the deck's officers and operatives saluted a second later.

"At ease," he remarked.

The Command deck was rectangular in shape, with soft curvaceous lines rather than angular spots where the sides connected. Various holographic depictions of the space around the Dreadnought as well as data charts containing the percentage of functionality of the sub-systems of the ship all appeared in front of Shepard as he sat down, on the slightly raised surface at the center of the deck. His right hand was on the palm shelf of the Commander's chair, his fingers nimbly working through the program.

EDI's holographic appearance sprouted to 'life' on his left palm shelf, her blue color unexpectedly bright for the moment.

"Commander, we will be passing by the Subspace buoy within five minutes. You may compose a brief message to be sent."

"All right Edi," John said, his eyes closing as he brought up a thoughtful face.

They couldn't receive communications because of the speed at which they were going through space, but sending brief intermittent signals was a possibility. Of course it had to be in Morse code, and the privilege was Commander-only, but it was needed to know where the Dreadnought was in Subspace, and how long it would be before they could reach their planet.

"Three minutes to com buoy," Edi remarked all too quickly for his tastes.

John breathed slowly, before composing the message.

_Dreadnought Deep Darkness requests updates on crew's families upon arrival._

It was the official request every Commander sent, time and time again, to make sure the crew had the chance to discover if something had happened to their beloved ones.

Every time, someone would start laughing in joy at his parents having successfully evacuated from an attacked colony. Every time, someone else would scream his frustration at not knowing where his MIA relative was.

Every single time, someone would start crying for the loss of his family, torn apart by Liir torpedoes, enslaved by the Zuul, disassembled by the Loa, eaten by the Hivers, shredded by the Tarka or vaporized by the Morrigi. Every time, a tough and gruff marine would clench his fists and soldier on.

It didn't make the job or the request any lighter however.

"You know Commander, my sister on colony Tiptree is convinced you should send me home for Christmas," Joker remarked from his position. "She menaced to write you, so if by chance you get something of her, well her name's Hillary so maybe you could be nice?"

"I'll think about it Lieutenant," John said as his lips twitched slightly in amusement.

"Message sent," Edi piped in. "Next com buoy is at twenty-nine hours."

"So, you doing anything tonight Commander?" Jeff sarcastically drawled out. "Or are you finally ready for Poker night?"

"The commander can't play Jeff, and I hope you're following my advice and not betting money or rations."

"Nah commander! We're working with candy bars."

"Candy bars?"

"Yeah, the pot's a sugar pill, the highest bid is with something made of chocolate and the lowest one is with mints. Two mints make a high bid. We start with eight mints and three chocolate things."

"I suppose you don't play every night."

"Once a week commander, we restock in every colony. It's all in the resupply manifesto!" he quickly added. "And I mean, we can't get drunk because we're 'technically' on duty since the Zuul found out how to intercept us in mid-flight, but we have to bet on something and if alcohol's out…"

"You aren't making a compelling argument, Jeff." John sighed as he shook his head slowly.

"Oh come on Commander! You'd have fun if only you tried once!" Corporal Jenkins exclaimed. "I mean— I'll end up in the fridge tomorrow, I'd like to be able to tell my grandchildren that I wiped the floor with my Commander at least once!"

"You're too green behind your ears to make these boasts Leeroy," Jeff muttered loud enough to be heard through all of the command deck. "You'd have to beat me first."

"That's the easy part," John chuckled. "If you play poker as well as you play chess, I should just requisition your sweets to begin with."

"That's not my fault! It's Edi who's damn good at the game!"

"I am an Artificial Intelligence. If I could not logically determine the entire possible move-pattern of your pieces I could not be considered 'intelligent'."

"Did the Ai just call me stupid?"

"I surely did not call you intelligent, Lieutenant Moreau."

"Are we sure she isn't unshackled?" Jeff asked again.

"If she were, I doubt we'd still be breathing," John pointed out. "That's the same reason everyone aboard has the codes to terminate the AI, rather than leave them to the Commander's knowledge alone. Two key words and Edi here will bite the dust."

"I cannot bite solid molecules, Commander."

"It was a metaphor, Edi," Jeff rolled his eyes.

"Understood."

_Citadel Space_

Liara T'soni was nervous. She should have been at the dig site in Therum, rather than standing idly by at the Citadel's docks with an over-talkative Spectre.

"And then Nihlus told me I had the damn best aim since Saren, you know?" was the Turian's name Garrus-something? She supposed it had to be, since he was still speaking. "He said, 'Garrus, my boy, if you keep this up you'll get Spectre status in no-time' and here I am. Escorting an important diplomat to—"

"I'm afraid you have been misinformed," she replied startled. "I'm just an archaeologist, my mother is the diplomat."

"I know that," Garrus chuckled lightly. "But the Council believes that this is the best shot they'll get at cracking open the Solforce enigma."

"I have enough in my hands with the Prothean relics, and I'm not spy material!" she bit her lips while crossing her arms over her chest. Her right leg moved slightly behind her left one. "Maybe I shouldn't have accepted."

"Too late now I suppose," Garrus remarked as he pointed to a crowd forming in a corner. The vast bulk of it was made of C-sec officers cordoning the area as a mixed group of alien species were curiously waiting at the emptying dock —since C-sec was asking everyone else to leave the area.

"We don't want a repeat to the Batarian accident," Garrus supplied seeing her frightened face. "It's been years, and yet many don't even know the face of a Human. Personally, I think they've got four eyes like the Batarians," he whispered confidentially. "And a set of tentacles like the Hanar, followed by Turian scales and a Krogan's hunchback."

She imagined them and chuckled. Liara had been told they resembled the Asari, albeit their skin was white or dark, sometimes yellowish but generally not in the spectrum of colors that belonged to the other alien species. The dock's overseer voice echoed through the now empty area —barring her and the Spectre.

"Attention, Unidentified Human Vessel landing shuttle at Dock Four, please all unauthorized personnel are to leave the area."

"Here they come," Garrus whispered beneath his breath.

"This tension is killing me," Liara whined as she skipped from foot to foot, opening and closing her sweaty palm at the same time.

A sleek-looking white thing, with a double-W shape, came into view beyond the gravitational area of the Citadel. It seemed to be armed, and as it silently docked against the metal magnet of the port, Liara's breath hitched.

The magnet rotated slightly, before lowering the shuttle on the helipad nearby. The magnet detached itself then, the metallic arm resuming its 'at rest' place as the doors of the shuttle opened at the same time.

She had expected a male or a female of the human species to come and meet her. Maybe they would have held some sort of frown on their face. Maybe they would have had some crude words for her or things like that. She doubted the stories on Extranet of humans eating Salarian and Asari's inner organs were real. They certainly had to be spook tales born of ignorance.

_Fifty_ armored humanoid-figured things descended from the shuttle, rifles at rest in their arms as they ran to the sides of the metal walkaway. They stood to attention as a man wearing a crimson uniform filled with medals began to walk out of the shuttle, a black mantle that reached the middle of his back was fluttering in the wind of the dying engines of their shuttle, his dark hair and eyes reminding her of the Asari's crests, albeit more…fluid-looking.

He had pinkish skin and seemed even _small_ compared to the armed corps. Some of the armed guards held clearly feminine figures in their armors, and yet stood shoulder to shoulder with the males, some even taller than them. There was silence as the only thing Liara T'soni heard was the erratic beating of her heart as her mouth stood slightly ajar.

"You're going to catch a Hanar's tentacle if you keep your mouth open," Garrus teased right next to her. She sheepishly closed her mouth, and then looked embarrassed as she had no idea what to do now. She felt like being in charge of a first contact meeting. What did she have to do now? The human seemed to be looking at both of them with slightly narrowed eyes, clearly in distrust.

"Liara T'soni?" his voice was, for lack of a better adjective, a mixture of the Krogans deepness and the Asari's strength. She felt weak.

She felt _insignificant_.

Garrus gently nudged his elbow into her side, which made her stammer out a quite more-chirper-than-intended reply.

"Yes! It's me! Liara's my name!"

There was silence for another moment. Then the human turned to the Turian, the distaste now clearly visible on his face.

"Is she brain damaged?"

That actually hurt.

"I'm not brain damaged!" she snapped back at the rude human. "I'm perfectly and one-hundred percent functional."

"Then where are your things?" the human remarked once more, his eyes scanning her immediate surroundings. "You have everything on your… _person_?"

She didn't believe someone could make the word 'person' sound so…insulting, but apparently humans could. She scowled, her arms tightening around her as she crossed them over her chest and huffed. "I have everything checked in with the docking patrols. They would have already been loading them in your shuttle, if you had—"

"No. We will check through your stuff and what we deem safe will be what you will bring aboard. You are to deliver your Omni-Tool also."

"W-What? I wasn't informed on this!" she stammered. Would these…humans go through her clothes? Her…her _private_ things!? And even the Omni-Tool? That was savagery! That wasn't possible, surely the Spectre wouldn't…

"Concerning that," the Turian to her side spoke. "We knew how difficult you'd make this joint operation, so the Council already prepared her luggage." Garrus then produced a handbag. A plain white handbag with nothing more than her name on one side of it.

Suddenly, she felt _much_ violated and far less on the 'nervous' scale…while more on the outright frightened.

"Standard issue?" John muttered, grabbing the handbag and opening it. There was a toothbrush. There was a…a handkerchief. There was an old Extranet-less old Omni-Tool that could probably be used only as a note writer and maybe a calculator. There was some mint flavored toothpaste.

She didn't know whether they really believed she would spend three weeks cooped into their ships with only that much or if they were playing a prank on her.

"Ah…ah…" she chuckled nervously. "This is a joke right? It's not funny."

"This is no joke Miss T'soni," the man in front of her spoke. "We cannot risk our technology to be stolen."

"I'm not going to steal it by the Goddess!" she yelled. "I just want to have my luggage aboard! Is that really that big of a deal!? What is wrong with you!?"

Her biotics were flaring —something that would be scoffed on by the other Asari, and yet the answer of the man was much more…bland.

"She wasn't told?"

"The Council thought that she would refuse, if she were to know."

"What?" Liara's voice was now barely a whisper. "I'm not going! You can't force me. This is too much! It's too much! Send someone else! Someone who…"

"She's the only one approved for this," the man spoke again. "One hundred and six years old, barely past being a child by Asari age, biotics not as strong as a Matron or a trained operative of the Asari Commando. Daughter of Matriarch Benezia so she will make for an excellent hostage should the Council decide to infringe on any of our laws while she is in our space…and we will not hand back the planets granted to us."

"What…What are you talking about?" Liara's voice now lost all semblance of reason. "This isn't just an expedition in human space because of a Prothean relic, is it?" she turned to the Spectre. "What am I? A slave to be traded?"

"I'm sorry," Garrus lowered his gaze for a moment. "It is highly classified information by the council."

"It isn't in Solforce," the man spoke once more. "You want to know?" his eyes locked into hers, and there was some sort of amusement as the lips quirked upwards in the human's face. Was he really having fun seeing her terrorized form? Seeing her squirm under his gaze?

"Commander, this is improper," Garrus' voice was barely a whisper now. "There are still people who could overhear."

"Then shot them down," the human shrugged. "They're _your_ civilians, not _ours_."

Somehow, those words made Liara feel extremely cold.

"We have wasted enough time," the human snapped back again. "Either she comes or not, that shuttle leaves in five minutes. She can be aboard or she can stay here. That is all."

The human then turned around, his mantle swooshing as he began to walk back upon the metal walkaway and towards the shuttle. The rest of the armored humans followed quickly, all mechanically precise as they left.

"Listen," the Spectre's voice was in a hurry by then. "You _have_ to go. It's important —_really_ important."

"Why?" she whispered with what little strength she still felt in her muscles.

"Because we need anything we can get on them. Even the composition of their cells for holding prisoners is important to the Council now."

"But _why_?" she pressed on. She couldn't understand. Why send her? Why not a Turian or a Salarian? Why not a Batarian for all their love of—

"Batarian slavers attacked a human colony three years ago," Garrus spoke softly. "Two weeks later, the entire Hegemony pleaded the council to make the humans stop. _We couldn't, and all life in half of the Batarian Hegemony was exterminated_. Humanity doesn't play for keeps. It plays for _genocide_."

"But…I didn't hear of any of this!" she hissed between her teeth.

"That's because if it comes out, we would have massive panic! Think about a race that could wipe out the Turian's prime fleet standing just on the Asari's borders! How would you feel!?"

Comprehension dawned on her as she gasped, a hand moving to her mouth.

"The…the fleet wasn't decommissioned?"

"That was our first contact with Humanity," the Turian whispered. "We don't want another carnage. So please, _just go_."

She closed her eyes and inhaled sharply, trying to calm down her erratically beating heart.

Humanity wasn't just another race in space that preferred independence to joining the Council. Humanity was a race capable of defeating the prime fleet of the Turians.

This wasn't a diplomatic mission for unity. It was a display of strength and hostage exchange.

The Council…

The Council was a vassal to Solforce.

The chill that travelled down her spine as she reached for the shuttle, and as she climbed aboard only to find the only free spot in front of the rude man…that chill told her that maybe she simply shouldn't have gotten out of bed, shouldn't have answered the door and shouldn't have left the dig site on Therum.

Then, maybe, she wouldn't be imprisoned in a small and cramped place while staring at the extreme rude human who was seemingly trying to debate something with himself as the shuttle's doors closed.

"I am Commander Shepard of the Solforce Vacuum Forces," he spoke calmly —his hands clasped as the shuttle lifted off and departed with a slight shake. "And on my ship, _my word is law_. Are we clear?"

"Y-Yes," she croaked out. Why had she accepted? Maybe she could still fall off the shuttle, plummet to death and all…

"Good," and then the human _nodded_.

The armored human on her side slammed something against the side of her neck —a needle?

And then her eyes rolled over as she lost consciousness.

"Then _sleep, alien_."

**Author's notes**

**Garrus is a Spectre.**

**Liara is in for a rough ride.**

**Shepard is Xenophobic.**

**The Council handed over a political hostage.**

**Humanity has the possibility to destroy the Council races, but doesn't.**

**Happiness is abundant!**


	3. Cultural Exchanges

The Sword of Humanity

Chapter Three

There was an alien on his ship.

Commander Shepard knew unpleasantness; he had battled through grime and blood to get where he was, and he would gladly do so again given the chance, but everything had a limit.

There was a blue skinned alien, with strange horrendous tentacles sprouting out of her head, aboard.

And he couldn't kill it.

The Kill-Switch had been successfully implanted by Dr. Chawkas however, so even if the _thing_ were to suddenly have a killing spree, he'd be able to put _it_ down remotely. He'd have to get someone to clean blue-skinned alien blood from the spot, but that would at least be a finite problem.

They would rendezvous on orbit with the ambassador Udina, and he would then escort down on ground —and hopefully forever away from his ship— the alien. These were the times he realized that the _Deep Darkness_, for all of its strength in battle, held a single glaring weakness.

It was too _slow_.

He knew he was just being caustic; any other ship of the Solforce Navy would either take the same time or more to do the same track, and while their Pulsed Fusion engines weren't the top of the line any longer, they still were better than the old Fission ones.

He thrummed his fingers against the surface of his chair's palm surface, his eyes glaring murderously at the back of his flight lieutenant who was seemingly ignorant of his leveling glare. How could he be so calm?

_There was an alien aboard._

And they couldn't shoot it.

He breathed in sharply, before standing up and leaving the bridge —one of the marines behind standing to attention and exclaiming his 'standing down' from the commanding bridge.

The corridors —straight and narrow as they were— now looked viciously _constricting_ to him. He could hear it in the soft rumbling of the ship, propagating through the metal surface of the walkway he was on. He began to sweat, his left hand tightening against the handle of the sword at his hip.

It had taken all of his willpower not to simply burn the alien's things. Now he actually _had_ to _tell_ the alien it could freely _walk_ into the forward mess hall and into the showers.

The showers…the alien would be sharing the showers with the marines.

He gritted his teeth in frustration.

"Play it cool, Shepard," he muttered to himself. "It's not Isis," he whispered. "It's not Isis."

_Green skinned monstrosities bearing claw-like appendages and shrieking out angry-spouted words in their native tongue. Their Hive-Mind granting each soldier the realization of where everyone else was, making it impossible to just gun them down one by one. Thick skin and strong limbs that could tear apart a Marine within seconds if they made contact._

_He led fifty men into battle that day, holding out the Spaceport as the civilians evacuated. He fought through unblemished metal corridors and shiny advertisement for new hair products. He tossed grenades and held his men at the logical chokepoints._

_It was a manual tactic. It was a manual operation._

_There simply wasn't an end to the enemy._

_And bullets, eventually, always run dry._

He distractedly fingered the sides of the officer's pistol, at rest in its holster within his suit. He could just unbutton —or more likely tear open— his suit and grasp at the weapon within seconds. Yet…

Yet he had received his orders.

And to a soldier of Solforce, orders were the difference between life and death.

He took another deep breath, centering himself as he curtly pressed his palm against the side of the door, unlocking it.

John stepped aside as the doors slid open, a biotic flare emerging from within the room soon followed by a sharp cry of pain and the sound of flesh repeatedly hitting metal.

He waited another minute, hearing the soft gasps and whines of pain coming from within the holding cell before finally taking a step inside.

Sprawled on the ground and still slightly trembling, her eyes open and watery in a clear depicture of pain and misery, the Asari was looking at him with a pleading face. At least, he supposed the alien was pleading, their face was strangely too human for his liking.

"What did you do to me?" she croaked out, "It hurts."

"We embedded a mean to control your Biotic potential. A micro-transmitter is now directly between your third and your fourth vertebrae. Should anyone but Solforce try to remove it, it will detonate. Should you try and steal from Solforce, it will detonate. Should you try something like this again…" he gestured around the air, "it will detonate. It also transmits your location to the Ai aboard, so we know where you will be, _always_."

The alien closed her eyes as he kept on talking; he even used a bored tone, as if this was protocol.

"It can also unleash a light electrical discharge, which directly takes the energy from your own nerves to power up."

"Light?" she whimpered.

"Electrical discharges within one's own body are not generally pleasant," he remarked dryly. "Follow the guidelines, and this will all be over before you can realize it."

The alien slowly crawled on its back, its head now resting against the side of the cell's cot.

"Can…can I go to the bathroom?"

"At your leisure," he replied carefully taking a few steps backwards and leaving the small cell. The room was two meters per two —more than enough to calm down rowdy marines, and at a moment's notice tranquilizing gasses could be unleashed within— and that by itself was a luxury the alien didn't seem thankful for. Well, she was going to be glad she'd be able to use the bathroom without having to really leave the room.

They had given her a prison cell after all.

One corner of the room slowly lid apart, to reveal a chamber pot.

It was enough to make the alien scream obscenities again.

"This treatment is intolerable! It's uncivilized! I can't believe the council—" the girl screamed just as the hydraulic doors closed on their own accord, preventing the alien from stomping outside.

The commander still heard her however.

"Edi?"

There was another scream. Silence soon followed, interrupted by the whimpers of the alien.

After a few more minutes, the Commander heard the flush of the toilet.

Two seconds later and the doors slid open again, the alien's face a mess of blue and slightly darker blue eye-lids with tears streaking down her cheeks.

So the alien could cry like a human.

"Why are you doing this?" she whispered. "Wouldn't it be better to just…send me to sleep and wake me up once we arrive?"

"No," he retorted curtly. "I have my orders. I am going to show you around. You will follow, in silence."

The alien did not answer, but she did slowly nod and wipe away the tears. He gestured for her to follow, and then began to walk alongside the hallways to where the forward mess was.

"Four meters from your room to your right, is a magazine storage unit," the Commander quipped in while pointing to a black hydraulics door. "Anything you see is color coded and you can only access the nice red areas, understood?"

"I'm not a—"

The alien quieted herself within seconds. Her face blossoming in pain as she clenched her fists. "This is no better than—"

Her arms jerked sharply, forcing her body to slam against the side of the corridor.

"Edi can keep this up all day and all night, for all three weeks of your stay with us," the Commander smoothly interjected. "Given time, I'm sure she'd be able to find the correct electrical stimulus to have you dance."

"Commander, the number of impulses required would kill the subject the ninety-eight percent of times."

"Oh? You're lucky then," John added as he smiled to the alien. "You won't be forced to dance. Now, when I ask you questions, I want a 'yes, sir' or a 'no, sir'. I hope for your own good you know which is the proper one for the situation…do you understand me?"

The alien looked at him warily by now, before finally biting out. "Yes, sir."

"Good! Shows that you aliens can be trained properly," then John simply gestured for her to stand. The alien wobbled on her feet and bit back another reply. She followed…no, _it_ followed him through the metal walkway towards the forward mess hall. As they went by, he couldn't help but feel her gaze wandering as some sort of…violation of the ship.

This was a Solforce Dreadnought, this was his ship, not something an alien should be seeing from within.

The forward mess held metal tables fused with the floor, as well as benches. There were a few marines off-duty talking between them and playing cards —old maid, of all things— but as he entered one of them stood up, soon followed by the others.

"Commander!" they all exclaimed at the same time.

"At ease men!" he snapped back curtly.

"This is the forward mess," he turned to the Asari who had shrunk once more on herself at the sight of the four two meters and half genetically engineered marines without their suits. "This is where you'll be eating your meals."

"Is our biological consumption compatible?" she asked out without thinking, before closing her eyes and standing in wait for the pain. She hesitantly opened her right eye, and then her left, as no pain seemed to be forthcoming.

"It is," the Commander replied. "We can turn back now," he added before carefully making his way around the alien and back the same walkaway they had gone through once. The alien followed dutifully, scampering to keep up with his ample stride.

The man descended through what looked like a manhole, forcing Liara to actually squint at the thing before carefully grasping at the metal bars protruding from the sides of the ship. One foot after the other, she successfully lowered herself on the lower floor.

"This are the forward quarters," the Commander remarked. "Down that way is the Command Bridge, where I will be when I'm not through that door," he hissed slightly as he pointed to where his door was. He was following orders, and that was all there was. "Unless it is important, don't disturb me."

"I can access the bridge?" she inquired then with surprise.

"On the bridge Edi has enough cameras to always check what you are doing," John supplied. "And without an Omni-Tool you will not be able to hack into our network," he remarked. "You'll be given the data we have managed to already acquire from the Prothean beacon, and you may study it at your leisure."

She breathed slowly then, nodding.

"Yes, sir."

"Good," he spun around, moving towards the bridge with the Alien right behind him. He wasn't going to wonder why the Director had tasked them with this, but the com buoy just outside the citadel had been clear on the mission.

"So is the overgrown smurf sexy?" a voice commented from the helm of the ship, as Lieutenant Moreau kept on his gaze towards the radar and indicators of the ship's engines. He hadn't turned around, only heard the marine's exclamation near the door —he hadn't even stood to attention.

"She's blue Lieutenant," he retorted ignoring the look of surprise at being talked of —with her present nonetheless— by the two men. "There is no sexy in blue."

Somehow, John could feel the eyes of the alien settle on him as he sat down at his chair and popped open from the palm shelf a small disc. He inserted it into the Omni-Tool that the alien had been given and then handed it over to the thing.

"By the way, Lieutenant? The overgrown smurf is in the same room as you right now."

Jeff stammered as he spun the chair around, standing up with visible embarrassment.

"Sir!" he exclaimed. "You could have told me!"

"Excuse me," the alien asked then, her eyes travelling to the flight lieutenant. "What is…a smurf?"

"Ah, yeah, about that," the helmsman of the _Deep Darkness_ was flustered as he sort-of stammered out an apology.

"They're…I mean I'm sort of sorry about it, but they're children cartoons where there are these small blue creatures who live in the forest, and there's this big bad mage who wants to eat them but can never catch one."

"Goddess, it sounds like the story of Elc the angry Elcor and the smart Pyjaks…and I was compared to one of such creatures?" she cocked her head to the side. "Is that…a compliment, in your culture?"

"Ah well yeah! Yeah it is!" the helmsman nodded frantically.

John ignored them, holding himself from reigning in Jeff's blatant attempts with the alien. He knew the helmsman was going to be trouble. He suspected everyone down to the engine room knew that Jeff Moreau would be the first to try and befriend the monstrosities in blue skin. You just couldn't 'not' like the helmsman of the ship, and even if you could he'd still find a way to worm into you all the same.

He knew the only reason the flight lieutenant wasn't accused of Xenophilia was because of his medals during the Isis campaign.

And to think that, in another less-technological universe, he might have never even held a rifle or piloted an assault shuttle…

The man's Vrolik Syndrome was some sort of drunk tale he used to talk and boast of. The sickness had been discovered in the womb, and the ensuing genetical tailoring had brought out a perfectly healthy baby.

Still, he had 'dodged' the bullet of being forced on a chair for the rest of his life.

"We can talk more at…dinner, lunch?"

"Breakfast, Lieutenant," Edi commented calmly. "It is in two hours."

"Oh, right!" Jeff grinned cheekily. "See you in the forward mess then, Miss T'soni!"

John gazed for just a second more at the alien leaving the bridge, and immediately turned on the tracking sensor and the cameras. The blue skinned freak of nature entered her cell the next instant, closed the door behind her and then crumbled on the ground crying and slamming her fist against the pavement.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he reopened them the alien was in a corner, huddled and holding her arms around herself.

_Its_ arms around _itself._

The alien was a thing, not a human. It didn't matter what her physiognomy was, or what she believed herself to be. The thing was an alien, a monster, a non-human. The thing wasn't on the ship to make peace talks, but as a mean to an end for Solforce. That was the only reason he had accepted her onboard.

He knew duty before pleasure.

John hardened his glare as he opened up the messages of the com buoys that had neatly piled one after the other. The first thing he did, he opened the Black messages.

A list of names, surnames, medals assigned appeared on screen with the pictures of the recently deceased the Ais declared he should be saddened for. People like one of his classmates during the military training or of one of his fellow crewmen when he served upon the Cruiser _Xenos_ or the Destroyer _Devastation._ The more names popped up, the more he knew that eventually he would run out of friends.

Not that he had talked to any of them in the last five years…

He filtered the messages to those who held the surname 'Shepard'. It wouldn't work with the maternal side of the family, but at least it would give him some peace of mind. Two names bleakly beeped on the console's screen.

_Hannah Shepard, Fleet Admiral and assigned to the Tarka quadrant, died at age fifty-nine after the explosion of the Command and Control SFS Dreadnought Honest Flag._ _Relation to receiver: mother_.

_Michael Shepard, Fleet Admiral and assigned to the Zuul quadrant, SFS Command and Control Dreadnought Last Guardian boarded and status unknown. Assumed deceased or enslaved. Relation to receiver: older brother._

His left hand slammed on the palm shelf as he closed his eyes shut and snarled. His fist slammed again, once more, until he abruptly stood up and stormed out.

He entered his room and screamed, repeatedly swinging his fists against the metal bulk of the wall close by.

"Commander, your chances of breaching the hull are theoretically and practically impossible, may I suggest an alternative?" the Ai piped in suddenly, as the door of Shepard's room closed.

"No," he muttered. "Just get the VR ready for the Assault on Isis scenario."

"Commander, I have noticed a decrease in productivity and an increase of alcoholic consumption each time you complete the scenario. Might I suggest 'Kittens and Dogs' as a possible VR scenario?"

"I need to shoot things, Edi," he snapped back at the thing. "Not pet a cat or throw a ball at a dog!"

"Yes, Commander," the blue ball of Edi's face disappeared back into the hologram projector, as the door of his quarters slid open again.

John Shepard didn't need animals to pet or play with.

He needed aliens to shoot at.

_Cerberus Operative Lawson._

"So it is a no?" the Director asked calmly, his fingers tapping slightly one against the other. "Are you sure?" his voice didn't show the hint of an emotion, but she knew better than to believe he was anything but outright furious.

"Then I think our trades are over," the communication interrupted abruptly, the man returned his gaze to her. She tightened her hands on her Datapad, her gaze wavering slightly as she tried a nervous smile. She could act as the most flawless of operatives on any field, but she simply couldn't in front of the Director of Solforce. It was more than just him being the Director of course, or the fact that his entire body was a trove of pheromones and psionic altering fields designed specifically to make any living being strangely more…appreciative, of him.

It was the simple fact that the man was eying her with the harsh and stern glare he probably would have given to the 'trade' partner, whoever he, she or it was.

"The Quarians refused to be genetically altered into humans," the Director commented. "They refused the offer of a genetical re-tailoring of their entire immune system. We could have made them human, their DNA held surprising similarities with ours…but they refused."

"Should we send a fleet to hunt them down?"

"No, that would put them on edge," the Director shook. "We'll wait until they approach a system already guarded in the Terminus area. One with a jammer to prevent leaks to the outside. We'll give the council the usual excuse."

"Law ten," she nodded.

"Project Immunity was a failure," the Director remarked a moment later. "Michael Shepard's kill switch activated within two minutes from capture."

Miranda remained quiet.

"Project Cross-Fusion failed," he added then. "Subspace and Mass Effect do not mix."

She did not say a word.

"The other projects are still functional, and we received confirmation of Projects Ravaging Horde and Subject Zero."

The repeat of the same surname on her Datapad made her narrow her eyes for a moment, before she reopened them briefly. "Am I to assume we are enrolling another Cerberus?"

"Commander John Shepard," the Director of Solforce said then. "The survivor of Isis and the butcher of Mjolnir," he lit another one of his cigars. "All that he is missing is the purpose."

"He was assigned to an escort duty recently towards Eden Prime and the Prothean beacon…didn't we already acquire the relevant information from it?" she bit her lip —her and her way of asking out loud the questions she was thinking about.

"Yes, we did," the Director remarked. She felt like a child in front of such a man, who seemed impassible in the midst of all the chaos around the Solforce sector. "The beacon was damaged however, and repeated usage held negative effects on the user. You will bring the change of orders _personally_ to Commander Shepard on Eden Prime, and we will see."

A message flashed briefly on her datapad's screen. She opened it calmly and read through it.

"I understand," she pressed her lips thinly. "Baptism by blood?"

"I'd rather call it _rebirth_, through the fires of a _phoenix_."

The Director of Solforce remained quiet then, taking a slow calculative puff of smoke before resuming his work. She accepted the silent dismissal and turned to leave, only for his voice to cut through the air like a whip.

"If he fails, Miranda," he added then, "kill him."

"Yes, sir."

And then she left, just as the notes of Mozart's requiem began to sound across the Director's office. The _Confutatis_ piece of the funeral song of the century old composer rang through her ears as she took the lift down, to the shuttle bay.

She bit her lip as she scanned through the Datapad. Out of the entire Shepard family, the numbers were now down to five.

Before the end of his induction into Cerberus, she was sure only one name would remain.

His.

**Author's notes**

**Another chapter.**

**More happiness.**

**Everyone is friendly.**

**Everyone is happy.**

**Some questions are answered. Some aren't.**

**Some are made.**

**Isis is a Solforce Colony. If Mass effect has a similar named colony, belonging to another race, then it doesn't matter. **


	4. Exciting Prospects

The Sword of Humanity

Chapter Four

He was no longer Commander Shepard. He was the Shock Assault Trooper Michael Carson, Thirty-Third Company, standing inside the Assault Shuttle _Little Betty_ as it rumbled its way down through the atmosphere, forty-nine other men in the same area tightly packed shoulder to shoulder. Their Team Leader was Major Petrenkov, and he always spoke with an accentuated and fake Russian accent —considering Russia didn't exist any longer, he supposed it was some sort of 'honoring the motherland' thing.

They were assaulting Isis and already as the air of the planet's atmosphere encompassed the shuttle, so too came the noises of the orbiting ship's weapons entering and bombarding the major Hiver Outposts.

There were still packets of resistance within the colony, soldiers who survived the onslaught and hid between the ruins. They had mounted an assault immediately, in the hope of still being able to recapture the infrastructures and save the civilian population within.

It wasn't easy —it never was— to be an assault trooper.

They were the first in the battlefield, be it a foreign planet or be it their own. The casualties were the highest, and yet they soldiered on.

That was what they were in the end.

Soldiers.

"Nearing LZ in two minutes!" the pilot exclaimed, already the rumbling of the shuttle became furious, as the Hiver's anti-air systems tried to shoot them down. A few blasts of lasers were sent back as the shuttle reached terminal velocity during descent, before a sharp usage of the thrusters rammed the metallic drop ship against the ground.

The shuttle could take the abuse, and the armor the Marines wore was more than enough to dull the blow.

The back doors of the shuttle opened with a clank, and soon Michael leapt on his feet with his brothers and sisters of the company. They were divided into squads within seconds, and soon he was directly behind his Team Leader. Three other marines with their faces covered by visors followed them, and soon they held their rifles high and ready.

They dashed through the torn streets and the disheveled terrain covered by rubble and corpses. The Hiver's attack had caught the planet with the patrolling fleet elsewhere, and what little still was up in the sky had been torn apart. Police Cutters couldn't last against Hiver Dreadnoughts or Cruisers.

The planet had fallen, and the Hivers had entrenched themselves.

Thankfully the Green-Omega Four fleet detachment had been nearby, and had engaged in combat before the complete eradication of humanity from the system.

Now Michael Carson would prove himself upon the ground.

The first Hivers to appear were the scouts —nimble, with light green chitins covering their bodies and their frail-looking six limbs…yet each of them could easily outweigh a Marine and cut him in half with the arm-blades they literally grew from their arms.

Their four lower limbs possessed enough strength to easily make them jump over great distances, and with the way their claws curved and tiny barbs sprouted from their tips, they could easily climb over walls and rough surfaces.

Their chitin protected them against the smallest arms, and their internal and external skeleton forced any marine worth his salt to utilize specific weaponry to battle them; weaponry that Michael had and that John had learned to use like it was his second nature.

His caliber fifty rifle armed with Bugbusters burst forth a salvo of high yield polonium rounds, intertwined with an explosive compound that detonated five millisecond post impact.

The result was a mixture of a radioactive shower and an explosion strong enough to kill even the biggest bug within moments.

"Contact!" the scream echoed through all channels as the marines that had descended with Michael engaged their respective enemies. John gritted his teeth as he pushed against the rubble, the Virtual Reality machine sending the impulses to his brain to make sure everything felt realistic —even the sweat he held beneath his armor.

A Warrior cast Hiver shot forth from beneath the ground, its size easily rivaling four meters of height and half. Thicker limbs sustained it as its scythe-like claws carved a meaty lump of flesh out of one of the soldiers in Michael's team. John spun around, starting to fire upon the enemy. The bullets ricocheted against the Hiver's shields, as the beast lowered a rifle from its side, firing against the rest of Michael's squad.

Michael was left alone against the Hiver Warrior.

This was the precise reason John Shepard chose to play this scenario.

With a ferocious scream that came both from Michael and from John, the man charged ahead jumping above the rubble and slamming the rifle at point blank against the alien's chest. The bullets' detonation tore the thick reinforced chitin while bypassing the shields, but at the same time the recoil slammed Michael backwards. His combat suit absorbed most of the damage and radiation, but a sharp pain jostled through the man's spine.

A mere second of fighting, nothing more, and then Michael's eyes closed forever.

John Shepard opened his own calmly and removed the VR reality visor. He grabbed the bottle of cold and chilly beer next to him and gulped it down in a single breath. He removed the electrodes attached to his arms and legs, and stood up from the Virtual Reality pod.

That was how the world went. There were millions of Michaels fighting around the galaxy, dying by the same token —only with different aliens.

He stepped outside the VR room, letting the empty beer fall into the bin next to it —where it would then be sent to be recycled to become emergency patch material.

His steps took him back to his room, where he slowly slumped on his bed. He closed his eyes.

And then, as always, he dreamed the nightmare that he wished never to relive again.

You can't defeat a Hiver Warrior alone. Fast, nimble, strong and deadly…the wet dream of the Alien Sci-Fi directors concerning 'Insect Aliens' like those of Starship Trooper. Only orbital bombardment coupled with marine assaults managed to remove Hiver infestations from a planet. There simply wasn't another way.

Yet to save civilians, to save other Imperials, to save important data and infrastructure…

They had gone and fought a battle that he had lost.

If he hadn't lost his spot, if he hadn't let the Hivers overrun his position, then maybe a few more civilians could have evacuated. All those who died to recapture Isis…

Didn't they die because he had failed his job?

_Liara._

"I'm going to go mad," Liara muttered banging her head against the metal cool surface of the table. She could barely breathe, the pain from her muscles clearly told her that sleeping in a cell —no matter if it was larger than the barracks' single units— was not made to be comfortable. Furthermore, they had an Ai aboard, a non-rampant and apparently friendly enough Ai who was actually the second person on the ship that Liara could call 'friendly'.

The first one was the Flight Lieutenant, Jeff Moreau, who now sat in front of her having been relieved by another to take his place.

"You get used to it. We've got pills against Cabin Fever now, you know?"

She groaned, slowly pushing her hands over her forehead. She felt an impounding headache basically every few minutes, as if somebody was slowly plunging a screw through her head.

"I don't feel good," she muttered. "Stress must be getting to me."

"Can't do much for that," Jeff remarked. "Maybe we could talk about the weather?"

"I had a question concerning that," Liara replied suddenly. "Why are the blast shields down?" she asked, her gaze travelling upwards to where the few glass panels that should normally bring in the light of the outside were covered by inches thick metal.

"Ah, well," Jeff chuckled. "That's just a quirk of the Captain."

The murderous gazes the rest of the crew within the forward mess was giving her however told Liara another story. She bit her lip, lowering her gaze slightly as she placed her hands closed to fists against her knees.

"There's something in your method of travel that is dangerous to the ship then?" she asked. "That's why you have to keep your shields up?"

"No, nothing of the sort," the man retorted shaking his head. "Really, it's just a different mean of travel. Slower than yours probably, but by no mean inferior."

"Your fleets are untraceable while travelling," she retorted. "That is something none of Citadel's races ship can do."

"Yeah, but you take days going where it takes weeks for us."

"Unless the trajectory is close by, then you can cover the spot instantaneously," she said. "Your engines are…quirky, to say the least."

"Our engines are mighty fine!" a crewmen snapped up from the other table. "And I won't have any blue skinned monster tell me they are anything else!"

"Adams, sit down!" another man alongside the same table as the engines' engineer retorted curtly.

"I apologize," Liara was startled, but she still tried to excuse herself. "It's just…I was only curious."

"Curiosity killed the cat, miss," a third voice intervened from another table. "Keep your tongue in check."

The general murmur of approval told Liara that she had overstayed her welcome, and as she stood up to leave Jeff sighed and then banged his fists on the table.

"Come on guys! Just look at her! She's smaller than the captain for Christ's sake! She's got the kill switch implanted and she's barely older than sixteen Earth years. Do you jerk off feeling mighty fine at night for having made a kid cry? Half of you are rough and tough and genetically engineered to be some sort of Super Marine! Cut her some slack, she was just curious!"

There was silence in the forward mess. In that silence, Liara's lips tugged slightly up for a moment in a sad rendition of a tired smile. "It's…it's not a problem, I'll be going now."

And then she left, leaving behind the gazes of suspicion, of unblemished hatred and also the few of curiosity and…well, she hoped of sorrow.

It was as she was returning to her room that she nearly banged against a two meters tall female. The woman had raven hair and pale skin, and she seemed to be wearing a suit similar to the Asari Commando one. On her right shoulder was the symbol of Solforce, coupled with enough stripes to rank her as a Gunnery chief.

"I'm sorry," Liara said, quickly trying to excuse herself...only for the woman to grip on her shoulder tightly and slam her against the wall of the Dreadnought.

"What the hell is going on here!?" the tall marine screamed as she grasped Liara by the neck, before pinning her on the ground —smashing her face against the metal walkway in the same instant.

Liara felt the pain as she kept her eyes closed. She could feel the tears mix with the blood coming out of her broken nose, and somehow the grip on her neck was painful, as if she was being literally choked through her trachea. She tried to whine, to scream, to get someone's attention, but instead all that she received was additional weight settling on her spine —a knee of the woman.

"Williams! Let the girl go!" a voice bellowed from above. "She's clear!"

"What the hell is 'clear' major!? She's alien!"

"I said to let her go, Williams," the voice came again. "You can ask the captain if you prefer."

"Don't think I won't," the human Commando growled back. "Why was no-one watching her? Does she have the kill switch at least?"

"Let her go, you're choking her!" this was Moreau's voice now. "And somebody get the captain!"

"Captain Shepard is currently resting," the Ai's voice piped in, but by then the merciful goddess took her in her arms, and Liara lost consciousness as the grip seemed to intensify for just a second more, before being released.

_Commander John Shepard_

"Commander, there is a situation on the bridge."

Edi's metallic voice woke him up.

"Marine cryo-change has been enacted. New forces have awoken and have yet to be told the situation. Gunnery Chief Williams was not informed of new development and acted rashly against Miss T'soni."

He groaned, slowly standing up from his bed. He walked to the bathroom, to get a glass of water to wash away the dryness of his throat. His eyes stared back at him through the glass panel, showing his rugged features and the need for a shave.

He'd leave the stubble on for the moment. He had more pressing things like an impounding headache and General Williams' granddaughter to take care of.

The Williams family had a history of military tradition that could easily rival any other. The first contact war with the Turians had been fought by the Williams' led fleet after all, and the numbers spoke clearly. If one wanted a boogeyman for the Turians, one just had to yell out loud 'Williams' to get them spooked.

Until the Solforce arrival, the aliens' ships moved like boats in space: they knew up and down, but generally they tended to fire from a forward position, never doing any of the moves that had made Humanity one of the most bastard races the universe had knowledge of.

Solforce ships in battle didn't only fire from a straight forward position, and there was a reason all pieces of furniture were magnetized or bolted to the ground. From the smallest of Destroyers to the mightiest of Leviathans…

Solforce ships could dance across the stars, spinning, twirling, flowing to the side or making backwards rolls in space as their turrets fired around. Like ballerinas they spun, literally avoiding hits rather than being forced to absorb them with their armor.

The Turians had never acquired the knowledge of what to do, when the enemy doesn't actually absorb the attack…but dodges it while firing back.

He walked on the bridge expecting carnage and blood and more paperwork on how the blue alien had died. He instead was pleasantly surprised to find Ashley Williams with her arms crossed over her chest and her back against the wall looking sour, while the blue skinned Liara was being carried towards the infirmary by the flight lieutenant Moreau.

"Commander!" his name being called by so many witnesses, he winced. He could _feel_ the headache incoming already…and he didn't like it.

"Bring the guest to the medbay," he said. "Williams? With me," he spun around and began to walk away towards the battle bridge. The soldier followed dutifully and in silence, and as they reached the elevator that went all the way up to the specific bridge, he gestured for her to enter before closing the doors.

Midway upwards, he pressed the button for the sudden stop.

"Edi? Render the lift out of order until I give you the all clear," he muttered in the now enclosed space.

"Yes Commander."

When the metallic voice gone, John Shepard turned to look with his arms crossed at the Gunnery chief.

"What happened?" he asked, exhaling loudly.

"Sir, permission to speak freely?" the soldier asked standing to attention. Shepard nodded once, curtly, and the woman continued. "The alien was aboard unguarded! That wasn't on the mission parameters!"

"They changed during our brief stay at the citadel," he replied. "We have to give her the kiddie gloves, Director's orders."

"Sir?" the soldier bit her lip. "Is this going down in the official record?"

"No," he shook his head. "I would have acted in the same way," he supplied. "But this should stress the importance of going first and foremost to the briefing room after every cryo-cycle, rather than loiter around."

Now the woman looked even sheepish. "Yes, sir. Won't happen again, sir."

"See that it doesn't," he finished, rebooting the lift and heading off to the battle bridge and the briefing room, where the rest of the marines just awoken from Cryo-cycle were already there.

If looks could murder, those of the marine-detachment leader would leave nothing but dust in place of Williams.

The briefing room was a circular area with a holographic system, generally used both for space-land battle direction and also for space-space battles and general weapon system controls. The holographic rendition of Eden Prime appeared on screen, pointed lines gesturing to the landing area near the colony where the beacon was located.

"We have correctly interpreted the fact that the beacon on Eden Prime is working," John began, as the holographic rendition of the beacon appeared on screen. "Due to Kill-Switch ninety-three however, it is impossible for any Solforce operative to operate it."

He gestured to a video frame of the beacon activating, sending out a pulse of light and then turning to mush the scientist who had moved too close to it.

"It appears the beacon automatically detects living and sentient beings and tries to send a neurological impulse into their synapses. Since this works similar to Zuul psionics, the Kill Switch activates."

"So the alien's the key, sir?"

"Correct, Asari physiology is naturally predisposed to acquiring information through neuronal interlinking," the hologram of an Asari appeared with the brain nerves flashing. "We will be sending her forward, understood? The Kill Switch in her is remotely activated, not genetically implanted."

Murmurs and nods echoed through the briefing room, before a marine hesitantly asked.

"Sir? How are we going to acquire the data?"

"Cybernetics," Shepard replied calmly. "We will extract her brain and archive it within a neuronal output. The masses of other semi-sentient beings will take care of the problem."

A marine actually turned green at that prospect.

"The closest Cyber-unit is on Feros, investigating the Prothean ruins. They are the most apt at re-acquiring information and they will be our next stop."

"Sir? Does the alien know?"

John just looked at the marine in question. Jenkins fidgeted slightly, before another marine slammed a hand against his shoulder. "Yeah, she's got a brain-in-a-jar secret fetish, come on Jenkins! Are you yanking our chains or what!?"

"Very well, remember the usual code of silence and know that the alien is to be kiddy gloved. An accident on Prime will render her _deceased_, and that will be that. Dismissed!"

The marines stood to attention for a second more, before splitting up in groups and heading down to the forward mess hall.

"Williams! You stay behind!" John Shepard barked the order as the woman was just about to reunite with her unit.

"Sir?" there was a slight wince in her face, clearly the woman was thinking of what her punishment was going to be, especially with the sadistic grin the Commander was sporting in that moment.

"You are assigned to guard duty around the alien," John nearly sang those words out with a sort of mock tone, but he schooled his features and tried to keep it neutral. "So…"

He moved closer to the woman in question.

"Become. Her. Friend."

"Commander…"

"Yes, Williams?"

"Permission to speak freely?"

"Denied," John shrugged. "You can go, Gunnery Chief. And be warned…don't force me to call you _Private_."

The moment John Shepard was left alone —after Ash Williams hurriedly left the bridge— he collapsed on the nearby chair, his gaze glazed as he stared at the holograms in front of him.

His chin resting on his hand's palm, he watched as the rendition of Eden Prime's planet rotated ever so slowly. Dots and lines showing the major cities and arteries of traffic shone brightly along its surface, while the overharvesting facilities worked full time.

Five data clusters hanged over the planet, four accessible to his rank and one not.

The first was about genetical engineered crops, the second was the Prothean dig site, the third was the installment of anti-space military grade rockets and the fourth concerned a pick-up of ambassador Udina.

The fifth one was way beyond his rank.

He hated it when things were Cerberus-rank or above.

It reminded him of his failure.

Of all his failures, to be precise.

**Author's notes**

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	5. Unforseen Alliances

The Sword of Humanity

Chapter Five

The first signal things were just about to go from bad to worse was the teary eyed gaze of the blue alien thing that was looking at her barely holding back a sniffle. She clenched her fists slightly as the alien began to _cry_ like a kid. Really, she knew the Asari was considered barely more than a child, but she was supposed to be one hundred and six years old. Heck, she was supposed to be a specialist in Prothean Technology. Some sort of Indiana Jones wouldn't have cut it, but she hadn't expected to have to deal with a…

Oh, now she got her punishment.

She was to be the glorified nanny of the thing.

Ashley Williams snorted at the sight of the thing beginning to bawl her eyes out as she grasped the sides of her Gym clothes and began to cry a river, covering in her tears the clothes. She'd have to requisition new ones, since these would end up being burned…

She hoped Command would refund them.

"I…I'm sorry," the blue skinned alien cried again, "It's…unsightly of me," she whispered then with a croaked voice. "It's just…everything's so cramped in here…"

"The bridge is pretty spacey, the mess halls too," she retorted holding back her venom. What did the alien have with the way Solforce Engineers built their ships? They were made to be sturdy and effective, to hold out even as their hulls turned to tatters. They weren't fancy big things colored in white with wide halls and corridors and a skeleton crew.

They had to house hundreds of marines and crewmen, and really…when you get boarded, who wouldn't prefer to defend the ship hiding behind cramped quarters?

Their ships were as much of a kill-zone as their general defense installation.

"But _he's_ on the bridge too," the way the alien said 'he' was like a kid speaking of the boogeyman. She couldn't help but repress a snort at that. The Commander wasn't scary. The girl should have seen him in action on Isis.

"The Commander? Nah, he's a nice CO. You should have seen the one I had while on Torfan."

She blinked. "Torfan? I know it's a Batarian moon base in the Hawking Eta sector…"

"No, it _was_ one," Ash remarked. "Bastards had settled themselves deep within the moon, with underground bases and whatnot. We had to flush them out somehow and the guy had the nice idea to use the ships' reactors' waste."

Her face moved closer to Liara. "We _burned_ the moon and the Batarians inside, sending radioactive material down their way as missile packages. By the time we were done the Batarians had nine eyes and more limbs than they had started with…oh, and they all died screaming too, I suppose." She shrugged then, internally smiling at the horrific face the alien was making.

"That's…That's monstrous."

"It was that or storming the base, losing thousands for a rock," she quipped back. "This way, we only needed a few days to remove the radiation, dump it in the sun and have a perfectly workable monitor station afterwards."

Liara remained quiet a moment more, before she finally scrunched up enough courage to ask the question that had been bugging her for a while.

"Why is humanity so battle-ready? The few reports said the Citadel races weren't the first you met, but there's nothing on what other species you met before," Ashley grew uncomfortable. The Curtain Silence procedure was still operative after all, and she didn't want to be trialed for high treason.

"Let's say we are extremely paranoid as a race," she remarked. "If you can make something fly, then better arm it with guns and bombs just to be on the safe side."

"I see," she smiled awkwardly. Liara remained quiet after that, her eyes settling once more around the infirmary. Dr. Chawkas was happily humming in a corner, while preparing a sort of strange green-colored vase made of glass that seemed to hold quite a bit of cables attached to it.

The doctor filled it with a strange viscous liquid —some sort of nutrient paste, she supposed— and then placed the vase in a corner. It was probably some sort of medical equipment she wasn't privy of. Liara was jostled out of her thoughts by the female soldier, who had come to the infirmary to be forgiven for her rash actions, as the woman seemed intent on standing up.

"Well, we're going to be inbound to Eden Prime soon. So how about…having a real tour of the ship?"

"I don't know if I can," Liara admitted quickly, albeit her eyes glinted with curiosity. "I don't like the pain," she mumbled then with her hand moving to her neck, where she could feel the slight bump of the metal ordnance inserted beneath her skin.

"Yeah, you get used to that too," Ashley remarked. "It's but a small sacrifice though, and yours isn't genetically engineered."

The Asari's eyes widened like saucers, as the Gunnery Chief's words escaped her mouth before she could hold them in. "That's…"

"I shouldn't have said that," Ashley winced. "Let's just forget about it, all right?"

"But it's no better than slavery!" to that exclamation, Liara suddenly found her throat constricted once more by the woman's hand. Her eyes hard as stone as she began to squeeze on her throat _again_.

"Williams!" the sharp rebuke of the medic was enough to make her lose the hold, and as Liara coughed and gagged, staggering to breathe, the soldier retorted calmly and with an icy tone.

"Nobody forced the suit on me, _smurfette_. I chose to serve, I chose to fight. Then again, what do you know of sacrifice? You're barely a kid. Ever seen your home burned down? Ever seen your father slaughtered by the Rippers? Ever…"

"The Curtain, Williams!" Chawkas now walked closer to the two of them, her expression stern. "What was the Commander thinking, having you keep an eye out on the guest?"

Liara remained quiet and with her eyes closed shut. Maybe if she was silent enough and still enough they would ignore her. Maybe…

The feeling of a needle pressing against her neck made her open her eyes for an instant, before she slumped on the bed again, asleep.

"I am starting to finish the sedative supplies, Ash," Karin spoke then quietly. "And every knock-out drug I use on her is one less for our soldiers when they get wounded."

"I'm sorry," the woman —two meters and half tall— said with a chastised tone to the older and visibly smaller one. "It's just that…she grates my nerves."

"She doesn't know about life in a human colony, Ash," Karin remarked putting her right hand along the other woman's arm while gently moving it up and down in a consolation move. "She's an alien. She wasn't trying to offend you."

"I wasn't smart enough for the research department or cunning enough for the trade one," Ash bitterly mumbled. "It was becoming a soldier like my parents or popping out litters of babies like some sort of bitch."

"Now, now," Karin chided her. "I'm sure we'll be getting some shore leave once on Eden Prime, so how about we go and open up a bottle of Sherry on that occasion?"

"The tank's ready?"

Karin just nodded in the direction of the cerebro-archiving tank. "Only needs a brain to start working."

Ashley's smile was bitter and small.

"_Though much is taken, much abides; and though_

_We are not now that strength which in old days_

_Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;_

_One equal temper of heroic hearts,_

_Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will_

_To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield_."

She finished her quote by crossing her arms over her chest, before sighing. "Those things creep me out…but they're needed, aren't they?"

"Per Ardua, Ad Astra," Karin wistfully remarked. "They simply never tell you when you enlist just how much 'hardship' is there to suffer through to reach the stars."

"Will all of this ever be over?" to that question, Karin just shrugged.

"It wasn't over when I was your age, Ashley. It won't me over when I die. Until the last alien lies dead and its infants smothered in their cribs…it's tiresome sometimes, to think about the vast undertaking humanity is placed under…but we will persevere, won't we?" she slugged lightly the other woman's shoulder. "We're not quitters now, are we?"

"No ma'am," Ashley smiled briefly at that. "That we aren't."

"Very well, I'll wake her up again. This time keep your cool, all right?" as the woman nodded, another needle was inserted into Liara's neck, waking the Asari up blearily.

"Goddess…where…am I?"

"I wanted to say sorry…" Ashley began again, and as she did Karin turned and moved back to check the last calibrations of the 'brain tank'. It was a horrible thing to use, especially because the individual had to be _alive_ for it to work, but in the end it was just another little thing in the larger picture.

Karin Chawkas had to keep repeating that to herself, because in the end, that was the only thing that made her sleep at night.

_Eden Prime_

The research station _Galileo_ orbited around Earth, the metal contraption as big as a small moon. The symbols of Solforce were etched alongside its surface, as a visible reminder of whom the station belonged to. The military station _Devastation_ floated in orbit on the opposite side of the planet, its missile pay-load and its giant hangars overworking themselves daily to resupply, repair and produce Destroyer-class ships with the help of the Orbital Dry Docks.

Guarding the system, the Fifth Gamma fleet led by admiral Hackett was currently patrolling the giant garden world. The world of Eden Prime had become quite the sort of advanced beach-head, in the event of an invasion against the Citadel species. The Mass Relay shone briefly in the distance of the system, orbital emplacements circling around it to open fire on whatever came through.

"Admiral?" the voice of Captain Anderson cut through Hackett's thoughts, as the dark skinned man's face appeared on the holo-screen in front of him. "We are receiving inbound signals from around the system. They look like asteroids."

He frowned. "There isn't an asteroid field in the system," he retorted. "There can't be asteroids."

"Long range bombardment?"

"Set Alert rank to Zuul-Liir, prepare battle-stations. Close blast-shields and all hands on deck! Virgo," he spoke to the Ai in charge, a humanoid green figure composed of data. "Open communication with the planet, initiate Self-Defense protocol. Send orders to the space-station: unload drones."

"It will be done, Admiral." The Ai disappeared in a flicker of green.

"Captain, get your fleet and intercept them at mid-range," Hackett ordered then. "If it's asteroids, missile them down."

Captain Anderson nodded and closed communication, as in his place the holographic display of the system now appeared in full-force. Red markers began to shine and beep dangerously, as the lights surrounding the command deck turned red and a siren blared to alert the crew. He could hear the rumbling of the engines moved to full-power, followed by the full contingent of crewmen taking their position as auxiliary and secondary officers began to pour in.

You never knew when you might need a replacement, after all.

"Sir! We've got to protect Ambassador Udina's ship," the communication officer remarked. "They'll be inbound in three-zero-zero! We've got the _Deep Darkness_ arrival scheduled in five-zero-zero!"

"Then let's clean up fast," he remarked. "And if we can't, send a com buoy message for Ambassador Udina to reach the space station when he arrives in system." He mused for a moment. "Send one to the _Deep Darkness_ too."

He then stood up, with his arms crossed behind his back as he looked down at the rest of his crew.

"Men, women, keep your cool and remember that if even a single rock goes us by, it might mean months of terraforming and reconstruction. Make Solforce proud and take those rocks down!"

The crew returned their attention on screen. Hackett sighed…that wasn't as much of a speech as it was merely stating the obvious. Still, he hoped that everything would be solved…

Asteroids weren't that difficult to fight now, were they?

_Deep Darkness_

"Attention. Exiting Sub-Space in five minutes." Edi's voice rang through the bridge, where Commander Shepard was currently reviewing the latest reports. Their fuel stocks were surprisingly low after the Sub-space travel to and from the Citadel, yet it was nothing a refueling at base wouldn't solve.

"All hands on deck," he piped in. "Sub-Space exit in five."

Ashley would probably be bringing Liara to the forward mess hall. Maybe he should open the blast shields? Give the alien a taste of Solforce's might?

He inserted the unlocking code and ordered the delay-order until they exited Sub-Space.

"Exit in five seconds." Edi commented.

"Exit in four."

"Three."

He thrummed on the palm shelf.

"Two."

"One."

He tensed slightly.

"Exiting Sub-Space."

The moment the Sub-Space disappeared, the holographic display roared an angry red as sirens began to blare.

"Attention. Code Suu'lka initiated. Attention, Code Suu'lka initiated." The blast-shields came down, and in that moment…In that moment John Shepard yelled.

"All hands to battle-station! We're entering a war-zone! I repeat! Entering War-Zone!"

In front of the _Deep Darkness_ ashes and scattered remains of ships and broken drones stood floating eerily, as unknown vessels fired their cannons throughout the emptiness of space towards the Solforce fleet who was engaging them in knife-fights at close range.

"Admiral Hackett patching through," Edi remarked.

"Commander!" the Admiral remarked. "They've made planet-fall! Your Dreadnought is equipped with Assault Shuttles: send them down to provide air support!"

"Attention," Edi spoke. "Hacking attempt rebuffed. Enemy's signals are not organical. Loa priorities engaged."

The lights turned silver in the command room, as small version of Edi popped up near all the terminals. "Closing off from vital systems subroutines. Initiating manual command."

"Will do Admiral!"

"Hackett out."

It was in that moment, as the hologram updated to reveal the situation that John Shepard saw how bad the situation was. He counted over a hundred of small vessels, the shape similar to Silicoid queens, flying around and nimbly avoiding the lasers. Their own point-defense systems made it difficult for the missiles to get a lock-on, and since they hadn't expected Loa-ships all the Ais could do was lock down their sub-routine and leave manual operations online.

Still, the ships didn't appear in any of the Loa database, but if they had managed to rebuff the hacking attempts and there were no organic signals aboard…it could mean only one thing: Ais.

The trouble was one of the vessels, easily longer than a kilometer and with a strange squid-like shape. It seemed to prefer tackling the Solforce fleet ships and then crush them in half while firing a highly concentrated ray of molten metal.

It was like watching one of the Suu'lka's special 'elders' when they arrived on the scene, crumbling and destroying everything as if they were just swatting away flies.

This thing however was as if the Silicoid queen had decided to have sex with a Von Neumann machine, and the aborted monster had then merged with Cthulhu to create some sort of…of thing.

"All marines to assault shuttles!" John yelled through the intercom. "This is not a drill! Eden Prime is under attack by unknown forces!"

He gritted his teeth as he assumed direct command of the ship's steering wheel. Edi could only provide vocal assistance due to the Loa-blocks, in order to prevent a counter-hacking of the Ai shackles and the Ai then assuming control. The officers scrambled to the battle bridge, the blast-doors around the Dreadnought beginning to close off as pressure was removed from the unused rooms.

"Williams! Get the package down on the planet! Evacuate Vip protocol!"

The Solforce ship began to rise and speed up, as the engines burned through the fuel at double time, soaring through the air as the Marines ran to the shuttles within the bay, their suits on.

"We're in missile range, Commander!"

"_Open fire! Cover the Shuttles!_"

_Ashley Williams_

It was a rocky drive down.

Missiles detonated near the shuttle, as lasers pinged across the surface of the small vessels used for planet-assaults. Next to her in a hastily donned space-suit was Liara, belted up against the wall to prevent her from moving too much. Ashley had the Brawler suit on, which pressurized and contained the momentum of the shuttle, while the alien was simply wearing her normal clothes and a baggy space-suit normally used for repairs.

"Oh Goddess," Liara moaned as the shuttle trembled once more. "We're going to die."

"Shut it princess," Ashley barked back. "This is nothing compared to Zuul rippers."

"Major, sitrep on ground?" one of the fifty grunts piped in, turning to look at the Major Alenko who was currently reviewing infos through his Datapad.

"We're coming down hot on the alien. Regular scenario applies: if it isn't human, you shoot it down. If a human doesn't vouch for it, you shoot it down. Ambassador Udina has made planet fall already, the station _Devastation_ is badly damaged and in the process of falling out of orbit. We've got zero orbital support, so make the shuttle's air support count."

The marines checked their rifles, looking at one another before turning their gaze back to the team leader.

"Shuttles are equipped with Armor piercing rounds, so don't ask for support in battle, but against enemy structures. They can avoid laser fire, but we've got nothing against mass driver technology so shape up and be smart. Group of five as always, Williams and the Vip you're with me, Fredricks and Jenkins. The rest split up and provide support to land-marines."

The shuttle's rocking motion was now accompanied by sound.

"We've passed the atmosphere!" the pilot remarked. "Going down!"

The noise was now deafening, as the Anti-Air systems of Eden Prime passed by their shuttle to fire at the incoming enemy barrages.

The shuddering of the shuttle came to a halt abruptly, as it began to change the gradient of descent. In mere seconds, the speed lowered itself to a few miles, and then abruptly stopped. The doors to the back of the shuttle opened up, letting the marines descend to secure the landing zone.

Ashley took a deep breath, before unbolting Liara. "Come with me, understood?"

The alien girl just nodded meekly, before following straight behind her. Major Alenko gestured for Fredricks and Jenkins to follow, and soon they had fanned out in a three point advance, with her covering the rear and Liara in the middle of the formation.

The next instant, a strange Silicoid-looking thing flew over their heads, dropping tight bundles of white on the ground that unpacked, to reveal flash-light heads on sinuous bodies…and the corresponding rifles.

"_CONTACT_!" bursts of bullets flew from Alenko's rifle and slammed against the closest of those things, which seemed to be dumbly walking forward without a real purpose. It fell, crippled and oozing white liquid that couldn't be blood.

"Geth?" Ashley's body twisted sharply towards Liara, who seemed to have stilled at the sight. "What are Geths doing here?"

"You know what these things are?" her voice was probably telling loads of her current emotional state, as the alien seemed to recoil slightly.

"They're supposed to be beyond the Perseus Veil! They never went further than that!"

Ashley's brawler suit wasn't meant for finesse. So, when she grabbed Liara's shoulder, the 'squeeze' was in truth a bone-breaking crush force that nearly turned to mush the blue skinned alien.

Liara didn't scream, frightened as she was.

"Williams! Stand down!" she snarled through the helmet, before dropping the alien on the ground.

"Sir! She knows what these things are!"

"Killing her won't give us answers, Williams!"

Liara recoiled from the two, tears running down her eyes as she began to run in the opposite direction.

"Follow her!" the moment Alenko said that, Ashley was already hot on the girl's heels. The suit increased her speed, but as her right hand was about to clasp against the alien's arm —probably also snapping it in two in the process— a strong force slammed her backwards.

The alien tore through the suit while flaring a powerful blue color, before keeping up her run.

"Sir! The remote!"

"We don't have it!" Alenko snapped. "We can't contact the Commander too! Follow and subdue her!"

"Yes sir!" and then they began to pursue the overgrown smurfette.

…

She was going to make the alien pay. Somehow, she just knew the alien was responsible for these…Geth, or whatever they were.

_Liara T'soni_

Liara ran. She ran with her sight blurry and her biotics flaring. She ran through the undergrowth and past the rubble, the sound of shots and the noises echoing all around her as she crossed a veritable battlefield. The Geth's plasma rifles fired repeatedly until overheating, their shots pouring their mass-effect drivers against the armors of the human forces.

Had they told her she would have preferred the sight of a Geth to that of a living being, she would have laughed at the morbid joke. Yet in that moment the Geth seemed like the nicest 'want to kill you' guys around and she had enough. If they wanted to kill her, then so be it.

She wouldn't go down without a fight.

Maybe she could steal a shuttle and run away? She had no idea how the human shuttles worked, but the Geth ones should prove easier to use.

With the corner of her eyes she saw a Geth Colossus helped by Geth Destroyers flank an human entrenched position, the screams of the dying human mixed with the shots the wounded still fired against the machines. She overheard the loud noise of engines, soon followed by a Geth dropship being gutted inside out by a human shuttle, the bullets opening up holes the size of windows and detonating the synthetics' air support.

The Geth Colossus turned to open fire on the shuttle, who seemed keener on…

Was it going to slam against…

The shuttle slammed against the Colossus as the pilot ejected from the seat, the explosion sending waves of radiation to fill the air as the nuclear fusion reactor within it exploded. Liara felt her mouth fritz, even as far as she was…and in point-blank range nothing but ashes and charred ground remained.

The pilot himself had probably been imbued in so much radiation that he wouldn't survive, or so she thought as she scrambled from her cover of a splintered tree towards the entrance to the space-port, past metallic crates and…

Straight in the arms of a Turian.

"Ah!" she fell on the ground hard, before ending up face to face with the barrel of a Spectre-approved gun.

"Thank the goddess!" she exclaimed somehow giddy, as she took in the figure who had in the meantime holstered the weapon and was now helping her stand up. "Wait…you're…"

"Saren Arterius," the Turian remarked calmly. "Are you Liara T'soni? Your mother asked me to come and get you."

"My…my mother?" she was surprised. They were in a Geth filled planet, in a human colony under assault, and yet her mother had…

"How did you manage to get here?"

"Well, I'm a Spectre…and a few things have changed during the time you have spent with the…humans."

Another Turian Spectre walked in, before looking in surprise at Liara.

"Nihlus? I found Benezia's daughter."

"Saren, why am I not surprised, old friend?" Nihlus smiled briefly, a low chuckle escaping his throat. "Have you told her?"

"Not yet," and then Saren turned to stare at an incoming Geth unit. Liara's eyes widened to saucers as the Geth Prime send in an electrical voice.

"Saren-Prophet, we are securing the beacon. Enemy hostiles have proven tenacious. Fifty-nine percent casualties among ranks. Additional forces from orbit required. Nazara-bringer-of-future is requesting update."

"The Geth talks?"

"The Council," Nihlus said then as he stepped closer to Liara. "Has allied itself with the Geth. Saren has brought to us irrefutable proof that we may have means of contacting the Prothean Empire through the Citadel, and the Protheans…they might help us fight back Humanity's advances throughout the Council space."

"W…What?" Liara's eyes widened further.

"We just need the beacon of Eden Prime —once it arrives through the rail system we will be able to access the data for the Conduit. Due to time and tear the Citadel had the only mean for the Protheans to return blocked, but they thankfully left behind an Artificial Intelligence that contacted Saren in order to help in the return of the Protheans."

Liara's heart began to beat faster. "So…the Protheans didn't disappear?"

Nihlus shook his head. "No, but you'll see. Nazara will explain it to you once we get out of the planet."

And Liara finally breathed in ease. She was safe. She was with two council spectres, the Prothean would certainly help them with their advanced technology and the humans would probably finally meet an enemy at their level. It was as she stood there in wait however, that a thought crossed her mind.

_What did Ashley mean with Zuul rippers?_

**Author's notes**

**You did not see this coming.**

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	6. The Bitter Victory

The Sword of Humanity

Chapter Six

Up above Eden Prime, the space battle was drawing to an unforeseeable conclusion. Mass driver rounds impacted against the strafe section of the _Black Wing_ dreadnought, tearing apart the command bridge and forcing the ship to pressurize and lose its guide.

Within seconds, the headless Dreadnought impacted against the shambling remains of the Science Station in orbit, detonating in the same instant as its reactor reached critical point.

From his observation post alongside the planet's orbit, John Shepard was silently cursing the situation.

"Isn't there an end to these things!?"

"Commander! Admiral Hackett on the line!" the communication officer barked through the shuddering bridge —smaller mass effect rounds impacting against their reinforced armor plates and bouncing off.

"Patch him through!"

The weary face of the Admiral appeared on screen, his expression contrite and his eyes narrowed.

"Commander Shepard, we are about to finish our supplies. I'm pulling out the Fifth Gamma Fleet after this last barrage."

"But sir, the ambassador—"

"Commander!" Hackett snapped. "We won't have a single missile left after this barrage and if our Dreadnoughts didn't cut it, I doubt our Cruisers will. We're aiming for the Black Twenty-Seven up there, whatever the hell it is."

"Sir," he snapped to attention. "Ready at your signal."

"Well then Commander, it's been a pleasure having you under my command. Henderson? You copy?"

"Yes, sir," David Anderson's voice cut in on the communication, and suddenly a feeling of dread pooled into Shepard's stomach.

"Somebody will have to remain behind to hold the thing back. I'm not letting it hit our men with their backs turned. Anderson? In five minutes, you'll be the new Fleet Admiral. Till then obey my orders and _retreat all forces_ from the system right now!"

And then, John Shepard watched as realization dawned on the face of Anderson, as Hackett's grim smile bloomed into a sort of gruff snicker.

Communication was cut off a second later.

_Hackett_

_Cruiser Gamma Ray_

"Men," he spoke crisply, as various ruptures around the bridge splintered and showered radiation and gasses around them. "We won't be leaving."

"Yeah, Commander. We kind of got that," one of the officer chuckled —his face was covered in grime and he had a dark and blotchy wound on the forehead. "Collision course?"

"Get us against that son of a Von Neumann whore, and bring the reactors to critical level," Steven Hackett exhaled slowly, as the men and women under his command obeyed, the flashing lights of the Ai warning him that the databases were being purged to prevent information capture from the wreckage.

"Commander, they're aiming at us!" a rumble shook the ship, as mass drivers impacted against the starboard side.

"Magazine sector's critical sir! It's going to explod—"

A loud noise echoed throughout the corridors, as the yell of "PRESSURIZE!" filled the bridge.

The blares of the sirens were accompanied by the hydraulic doors shutting close all over the ship.

"Sir, we've got people on the Hannibal Pods."

"Turn starboard, eject, turn portside, advance."

There was silence for a split-second, before the order was understood and received. The escape pods were launched as crude flares, upon which the enemy's missiles and short-range lasers impacted against. This lowered the pressure on the _Gamma Ray_, whose speed reached maximum velocity as it neared the giant vessel.

The thing was opening its arms, the red circle on its stomach flaring with light as it prepared to fire.

"_ALL ARMS, BRACE FOR IMPACT_!"

And then, there was light.

_Commander John Shepard_

"Commander, transmission incoming from Eden Prime," Edi's voice piped in as his right hand was covering his face, the rumbling of the point-blank lasers firing at the enemy's missiles as the smaller mass drivers pinged out.

Their own salvo discharge of missiles had impacted against the monster at the same time as those of the rest of the fleet…and the thing had barely swerved from its orbit. It was like watching the System Killer all over again. It was like seeing one of those old war vids of the Hiver Dreadnoughts barraging against the Solforce Destroyers. Bile rose to his throat as he realized they would probably be the next ones —Dreadnoughts were slower than Detroyers or Cruisers in battle, and the thing seemed to target them first.

"Patch it through."

The image of a muddy-faced Ashley Williams came to screen, the soldier hiding behind a rock formation as next to her Major Alenko was firing shots at something.

"Sir! The alien said the enemy is called 'Geth'! Whatever the hell these things are, they use plasma shots!"

"Williams! Have you joined with the ambassador's forces?"

"Negative sir, we're cut off by giant Terminators at the moment," Williams remarked. "The alien escaped too, she went towards the spaceport," the soldier snorted. "As if somebody would give her a passage."

"Williams," John's face darkened. "Your mission to retrieve her takes top priority!"

"That's the thing Skipper, _she's no longer there_! Spaceport's empty! _She left_!"

John's eyes snapped to the hologram of the battlefield. The sensors weren't picking up anything but enemy fighters and ships, and…

There.

Near the point of deployment, a red shuttle was heading straight towards the Black Twenty-Seven.

He growled.

"Never trust the alien," he muttered. "Never."

He stood up, staring at his men who were already starting to sort-of relax as the enemy ships appeared to be lowering their amount of fire.

"Men," he began. "Slingshot around the planet, reach for the Mass Relay."

"Sir?" the navigator, Pressly, looked at him with perplexity. "Our orders are to retreat."

"They have the alien, and the alien has knowledge of the inner working of key structures belonging to Solforce. She must not escape us." He enlarged the image of the shuttle. "It's aiming for Black Twenty-Seven. Slingshot around, it will be faster than turning the ship, and get her in range of the missiles. We're taking that thing down even if we have to ram against it."

"Yes sir, plotting course," the Navigator's mood actually spiked at that information. Pressly was far more vocal on the need to 'euthanize' the alien whenever possible, but that did press from his past. John had gotten him drunk once, and he had wished he hadn't afterwards. The man's entire family, sons, daughters, granddaughters and what-not had been assaulted during the Node-Line travel of a colonizer's ship by Zuul Bore-ships.

They had never found the bodies, but then again Zuul thought that infants were delicacies to be eaten roasted after their minds had been raped.

He called the Engine sections, opening communication with Chief Engineer Adams.

"We need more power to the engines! Sling-Shotting!"

"Understood sir, we'll increase the Deuterium to critical mass. The coolant pipes should hold."

"Sir," another Engineer remarked next to Adams. "We're irradiating already; the Geiger's clicking."

"Suit up then! You heard the Commander!"

He cut communication with the Engine, before moving to the Battle's Bridge.

"Emerson! Come in!"

A tanned man, with green eyes and a Solforce beret, appeared on screen. Behind him men were moving their hands frenetically on their consoles, while the blast-shields were covered with holograms of the outside situation.

"Emerson here commander," the battle bridge overseer replied. "All missile batteries recharging, particle beam primed and ready to fire. Point-Blank defense ready to fire."

"We're sling-shotting! Fill the tubes and hold them in, aim for the shuttle I'm pinging you."

"Will do Commander, will do."

John gritted his teeth as he closed off the communication, before starting to thrum his fingers against the palm-shelf of his chair.

"Send Data-Packet to Captain Anderson," he turned to Edi as he spoke. "Warn him of my orders."

"Data-Packet sent," Edi said a moment later.

"Now close all communications with external ships."

"Done, Commander."

Edi did not say a word more, albeit the way the Navigator was looking towards him told a long story.

"Repensum est Canicula, Commander?" Pressly asked.

"Confutatis, Navigator. _Confutatis_."

And then the music began to sing as the Dreadnought spun in orbit around the planet.

_Confutatis!_

The ship gained speed.

_Maledictis!_

The point-blank lasers fired on the incoming missiles, as the mass drivers missed them. The formation of Geth ships was broken through as the Engine sector turned an alarming shade of orange and red. Crimson flames sprouted from the reactor's hologram, as the ship's speed simply increased.

_Flammis acribus addictis!_

John's voice seemed to be lost in the blare of the sirens, as the missiles were unleashed upon the unsuspecting shuttle.

_Flammis acribus addictis!_

The missiles flared out of their racks and twirled in space as silent delivers of death. An enemy cruiser flew to intercept them, ending up torn in half by the Particle Beams of the main mounts.

_Voca me cum benedictis_.

Speeding through the wreckage, the missiles detonated after the long-range lasers of the Black Twenty-Seven came down to protect the rear of the shuttle.

"Don't you dare stop!" he roared to the ship, more than to his crew. "Take them down!"

The particle beams fired ahead, the shuttle nimbly evading them as the Black Twenty-Seven's limbs began to fall to somehow 'safeguard' the shuttle from harm.

"You imbecile," John snarled. "We're in space!" he thrust his hands on the palm-shelves, pulling up the manual commands to change direction. "There's no ground!"

And then the Engines ended up upwards, as the ship spun and the missile racks fired downwards, before locking on their target and starting to rise back up.

The Black Twenty-Seven outright _screamed_ as it had lowered its kinetic barriers to let the shuttle board. Without the protection of its reinforced 'digits', the missiles' explosion broke the outer layer of the construct, sending its alloys to scatter in the air as radiation and heat washed over its interiors. The thing wailed as it opened once more, a red ray of death coming forward to slam against the Dreadnought's exterior hull and breaching through it as the Polysteel barely held its form.

"Forward Mess breached. Forward Quarters breached. Pressurization needed. Pressurization requested. Pressurize immediately."

Edi's monotone voice was met with the scrambling of one of the officers out of his seat, to slam a hand down on a lever near the command's bridge door. The lights blared red for a split second more, before the hydraulics closed all doors shut with an extra protection of a steel plate. "Command Bridge Pressurized."

"Attention, impact imminent."

That snapped John's attention back to the hologram, and in that instant…he realized the engine-section was now ramming against the upper reinforced side of the beast.

The engines broke, the detonation ringing across the ship as the alarms for radiation echoed in the now devoid of life lower levels —where the radioactive waste was usually stored, and which were now pre-emptively emptied.

The explosion tore apart chunks of the alien's upper plates, exposing cybernetic and metallic frames beneath. Then again, the creature prepared to fire once more.

"Engage side thrusters!" John's command fell on frantic people who were busy rerouting the auxiliary power across the ship, trying to get the side thrusters to move.

"We don't have enough energy for that and the point-blank defense sir! Disengaging particle beam and life-support! Everyone, brace for Zero Gravity and suit up!"

The metallic helmet popped to life around his throat, provided by the chair he was on. The rest of the crew scrambled to get the breathers out, before the gravity went away soon followed by the air resupply. The thrusters engaged barely, pushing to the side the motor-less Dreadnought out of the line of fire of a second laser ray of sorts.

"Sir! He's locking on us!"

John cursed.

"Activate the warheads in the ship's magazines! Let him eat on—"

"Commander Shepard, it will not be necessary."

A female voice spoke from the speakers near his seat, as the blurry hologram of a woman appeared. "Reinforcements have arrived."

And then a strong pulse of energy slammed the Black Twenty-Seven two kilometers away from their ship.

Yes, in his book, that day, Psionics became his most beloved friends.

_Cerberus Operative_

_Miranda Lawson_

"The Artificial Biosphere on the ship is all crap around here!" the female Admiral of the ship cussed, "I mean, ma'am, it's shit pure and simple. We should hook up with the planet's Psi-sphere"

Jacqueline Nought cursed even louder, as her hands thrummed around her arms. The woman's body was barely covered by straps of synthetic belts, the vast majority of the skin blemished with neuronal micro-chips that connected to the outer layers of the Psionic-Enhancer. Near her stood other Psionics, all in her very same 'dress' code.

"This has nothing to do with Eden Prime being your home, is it?" Miranda remarked, her arms crossed over her chest with a barely contained smirk. She was the only one dressed with a modicum of normality, but after all what else could she expect from a Psionic ship?

"Course not Cheerleader," Jacqueline snorted back. "We work better recharging through the atmosphere's psionic potential."

"Fine, up-link to the Psionic population down on the planet."

There was a soft beep, as a female purple colored hologram materialized on deck. "Uplink executed. We are connected."

Jacqueline chuckled before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. "That's the shit now, Aida. See cheerleader? _This_ is how it should work."

And then the Psionics' Admiral clapped her hands together, soon followed by the rhythmic repetition of feet stomping from the others.

Outside, in the depths of space, waves of strength smashed throughout the infinite nothing sending particles of thoughts-turned-reality into existence near the Geth Dreadnoughts firing upon the last remaining Dreadnought.

The particles slammed through the closest Dreadnought, which suddenly began to fire upon its other ally, before crashing straight ahead and tearing itself apart as the engines blared and detonated, scattering the second enemy ship in pieces and hurling it against the planet's atmosphere.

"Take five! We're on a roll whores and bastards! Let's keep it cool and get the fuckers out of our system!"

"Enemy fleet retreating. Dreadnought _Deep Darkness_ in critical condition," Aida piped in just as the Solforce dreadnought began to detonate, ripping through its hull as escape pods were flung in the depths of space.

"Take five cancelled. Let's save those sorry bastards," Jacqueline snapped to attention, as a couple of 'scantily' clad men pushed their hands forward, sending the ship on an interception course with the pods.

"You reckon their captain's still alive in that mess?"

"Commander Shepard has been chosen to lead an important mission for the Director himself. If he's dead, then it just means he wasn't up for the task."

"Damn you're a cold Ice Queen…and a bitch, and a cheerleader. Did I say Ice Queen already?"

"You did ma'am," another man commented from his seat at the helm.

"Shove it Carlson! When I'll want your opinion, I'll let you know!"

"Yes ma'am."

_Ashley Williams_

Strange poles stood erected from the ground, corpses impaled upon them in some sort of twisted and sick ritual. Did machine even have gods? She supposed they did, and if they did…then they had to be damn bastards too.

The corpses of the colons and the civilians as well as those of the soldiers impaled upon the spikes fell on the ground with their skin flailed away, cybernetics of a pale blue color coloring them as they became a new enemy to defeat. Some sort of Xombie plague that seemed to be working through cybernetics, rather than through virus.

The bullets worked just fine —as long as you aimed for the things' head— and they did not seem able to wield weapons like their living counterparts. Major Alenko fired right next to her, taking out a husk that had been circling their entrenched position. The explosions around them had subdued —a sign that the enemy fleet had retreated or left to resupply.

The radio crackled to life as the jammers of the enemy disappeared, letting the words of the central command through.

"I repeat, enemy fleet is retreating! Allied fleet Psi-Five has arrived! To all Solforce Forces, throw the bastards out of our system soldiers! _Throw them out_!"

"You heard central command!" Jenkins yelled. "We're winning this!"

"Somebody get the rookie's head down!" Fredrick's scream tore through the air as a missile detonated near their cover, metal shrapnel tearing apart the right side of Leeroy's head and throwing his now still corpse on the ground covered in blood. "Shit!"

"They're flanking us!" Alenko's scream was met with the man's left hand tearing through matter, pushing away with his Psionic an incoming squadron of Geth who detonated against the nearby metallic surface. "They've got nothing to lose!"

"This is so screwed up it's not even funny," Ashley whispered as she took aim and gunned down another one of those Loa-Wannabes. "Fucking torchlights."

"This is Major Alenko! We need shuttle support!" the radio chatter grew wilder by the second, as a reply came through their ear-coms a few second later.

"Negative Major, we don't have any shuttles ready yet. Second platoon Earth Forces is inbound on your position. Hold your ground!"

A few gunshots of overheated plasma blazed through the air, melting apart the cover and tearing down the radio.

"Radio's down! We've got to retreat!" Fredrick's yell was met with the soldier standing up, giving his back to the enemy and starting to run away. He didn't take more than two steps before a sniper's bullet tore through his Brawler armor and left a gaping hole in his chest.

"They're using Anti-Armor rounds now," Ashley whispered in disbelief. "We're screwed."

"You heard the radio Williams! _Hold. The. Ground_."

The noises increased, as if all the Geth in the damn planet suddenly decided to come over to their nice position to have some sort of fucking tea party.

She held the assault rifle above her head, firing short bursts without bringing her head up. The Major instead crawled to the side of their cover —a half-torn apart metallic crate— and took aim. A Geth literally jumped in the air there and then, landing behind their cover and aiming his rifle at them.

She didn't think. She just pounced on the thing with her bare hands, slamming her fist —enhanced by the Brawler suit's hydraulics— against the face of the machine, tearing the torchlight apart as she grabbed the thing's rifle and jumped back down. The Anti-Armor caliber bullet impacted with precision against her left shoulder, tearing apart her arm as she fell with a scream.

The suit closed the bleeding wound up, cauterizing it with a gut-wrenching flare of pain. "Williams! Stay with me!"

"Fuck you Major!" she spat back out. "Fuck you."

"Now's not the time," he retorted. "Maybe later, after I save our sorry asses."

She just chuckled grimly as she felt her eyes grow heavy and her pulse lower. She let out a startled sigh of exhaustion then, as darkness clouded her mind and tiredness clasped against her soul. She finally closed her eyes, and as the eternal sleep claimed her she couldn't help but warily pray.

_Please…someone…help._

_John Shepard_

Edi's Ai programming stood snuggly fit in the palm of his hand. The entire database of Solforce fit into the palm of his hand. Terabytes of information all within a single micro-chip that could easily be lost, that could easily pass hands…and yet there it was, in his hands.

They had been rescued by the Psi-Ship _Pretty Bitch,_ a name that had apparently been changed mid-flight rather than in the docks where the ship had been built. He had lost nearly all of his crew, and no matter how much they were congratulating him for wounding the Flagship of the enemy, he couldn't help but consider this a loss.

They hadn't won the battle: the enemy had left. The only comforting thought was that the rest of the High Command wasn't actually blaming him, but the situation at hand. They had been nothing more than a Dreadnought after all, and his decision to stall and attack the Flagship had actually bought the land units precious time —there was no doubt that left alone, the giant Leviathan-class ship would have attacked the ground forces.

Having even managed to damage it, and having the chunks analyzed by their research labs, was a bonus by itself. Whatever alloys the creature used would eventually find its way to them, whatever weapons and shields they used would become theirs with time. They weren't salvagers like the Zuuls, but Humanity had learned to adapt and strive no matter where or what.

Humanity was the underdog that simply didn't want to lose.

"Commander Shepard?" his door had opened a second before, and already a female voice was followed by a woman with a curvaceous body entering. She held a Datapad in her hands, and her raven hair looked —for lack of a better term— voluptuous like her lips. He just stared at her for a moment more, before locking eyes with the symbol on the right side of her chest.

The three headed dog, Cerberus…from the Greek word Kerberos.

"Yes ma'am," he snapped to attention. Cerberus operatives worked outside the regular chain of command, but they spoke with the word of the Director of Solforce, and whatever they said or asked for was to be treated with the utmost respect. The Director handpicked each operative by himself, delivering upon them the expectations of all of humanity just as they were delivered upon his shoulders.

"You're resume caught the eye of the Director," the woman said off-handedly. "I on the other hand am faced with the recent events. You went against direct orders of retreat to commit a suicide run against the enemy Flagship. You lost more than ninety-percent of your crew. You were literally hauled into the escape pod by your crewmen, as you _refused_ _to abandon ship_."

"Joker said that, didn't he?" he winced.

"Lieutenant Moreau has already called dibs on the next ship you will be commanding, Commander Shepard," the woman now twitched her lips slightly upwards. "And in any event, what Cerberus demands is not victory in battles, but success in war. To lose a battle but win a war is perfectly within the parameters, and the dedication to not let go is also a part of the Special Operative Forces."

He blinked once. What was she…

"It is thus with great pleasure, that I hereby install you as the newest Cerberus Operative of Solforce. From this moment onwards, you are to refer to the Director and the Director alone. You will be given the private contact line accessible only to his operatives, equipment and means to reach the only end available to Humanity: victory over the alien."

Her face turned stern then.

"Until the last alien draws its last breath. Until the last enemy lies defeated upon the ashes of its world. Until the last bullet has been fired and the last weapon used against us, we of Cerberus will be. We are the Guardian of Humanity, we are its claws and heads, and we are its Shield and Sword. We who wield the Sword of the Stars shall cleave our path across the universe, to strike at the heart of our enemies. We are the Sword of Humanity, its weapon against the foul enemy. So," with bated breath she drew a pin from her pocket, before moving closer to his still-at-attention form. "Will you swear to protect Humanity? Will you swear to uphold Solforce ideals above those of all else? Will you draw your last breath in defense of the colonies?"

His eyes narrowed and his face turned cold as he snapped a military salute.

"Yes, sir!"

The pin was placed, the theatricals done.

"Welcome to Cerberus, Operative Shepard."

A Datapad was passed into his hands.

"This is the new Flagship of the Citadel-Border. It is a Leviathan Class, equipped with newly minted Eezo engines and top-of-the line anti-matter engines. It holds a Kingfisher, Scotsman and a Reflex Furnace module alongside a GOOP and a Joker system. It also comes with an in-built Xavier system. You may use the _Deep Darkness_ Enhanced Defense Intelligence as its Artificial Intelligence."

The next page that scrolled on the Datapad was that of the Leviathan-class itself. It stood at over eight-hundred meters of length and forty-meters of width, with at least eighty-meters of height. The bulks of the modules and the lights coming from the Battle Bridge and the Command Section were shining a pale blue light, as the name etched on its side was clearly visible.

_SFS-001 Normandy._

**Author's notes**

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	7. The Start of Operations

The Sword of Humanity

Chapter Seven

The Leviathan had _space_.

It seemed sort of an obvious thing, but for the Solforce Vacuum forces used to the cramped quarters of Dreadnaughts, a few more meters of breathable space made all the difference.

The ship's entire frame had been repeatedly reinforced with the top of the line steel, and Polysteel tubes ran their course across it. The liquid steel was like blood for the ship, coagulating into the holes enemy shots would create and hastily repairing the broken areas.

The Battle Bridge was massive, each console linked to a turret, a Laser Beam, a missile payload. The sheer amount of money gone into the _Normandy_ had to be staggering to say the least.

The engine section was no less. The Anti-Matter engine did not hum. It was eerily quiet. The Tantalus core used for the Mass Effect usage was instead humming as dark energy seemed to be contained throughout the spherical armor that surrounded it.

The other staggering thing was the number of crewmembers now under his command.

John Shepard, Commander of the Normandy, now had an active complement of three-thousand two hundred seventy-two men and women of Solforce under his direct orders.

All of them were trained, all of them were deadly and all of them were loyal.

The Command Bridge situated at the forefront of the Leviathan was encased within the very bulk-head, where reinforced metals and thirty-inch thick blast-shields coated in nanites for hasty repairs protected the people within from the space outside.

Quietly, John Shepard walked around the consoles and the hologram displays, his eyes taking in everything around him with the utmost reverence. They had given him a Leviathan to command.

Joker was already there, sitting at the spot for the Chief Flight Pilot, his hands already jerking through the consoles as he began to familiarize himself with the ship.

"Check the forward thrust," the man said without turning back. "Yeah, we could reroute the auxiliary for an added three to four percent right?"

John waited patiently behind, his arms crossed over his chest and a small smile on his lips. Joker was acting like a kid in a candy store, and if the exclamations of jubilation were of any indication, he had taken pretty well the loss of the _Deep Darkness_.

"Portside and Starboard thrust optimal? We need a few more ounces on the left side to compensate for the Element Zero core Daniels, and get Donnelly to work on the upward thrusters. We don't want a repeat of Black Twenty-Seven if we can avoid it."

There was silence for a moment longer.

"Yes, I can deal with overly sensible up and down thrusts. Reroute the auxiliary power and test the strain, but remember not to use the Eezo core with the Anti-Matter. The thing reacts poorly to radiation, and I don't want to be in the midst of a detonation before we even left the docks."

John took that moment to cough slightly.

Joker nearly jumped on his seat, before spinning his chair around and standing up to attention.

"Commander Shepard, sir!"

"At ease," he said then. He smiled. "I take it you enjoy the ship?"

"Enjoy? This ship's awesome!" he exclaimed then, "It has Anti-Matter engines! Their thrust, speed and tactical velocity are off the chart! No offense to our old ship, but now? Now we're on par with the Border-Fleets!" he slightly fidgeted, before adding in a lower voice. "Is there a chance we can do without Edi, Commander?"

"Joker…" John sighed. "Look, I understand the Via Damasco incident, but…"

"I hate her nagging voice," Joker remarked. "Things like 'Lieutenant Moreau, you should compensate the starboard side' or 'Portside approach would yield better results' and similar. She's nagging me like she's my mother!"

John raised an eyebrow at that information, before slowly taking out from his pocket the Data Chip with Edi inside and slowly inserting it in the slot next to the pilot's seat.

The entire structure flashed blue, as the Artificial Intelligence moved to fit into the entire cybernetic frame of the Leviathan.

"Enhanced Defense Intelligence online, codename: Edi." The mechanical but distinctively female voice of Edi spoke next. "Uploading Data. Retrieving Data. Updating systems. Systems Updated. Leviathan SFS-001 Normandy recognized. Retrieving Mission package. Mission package retrieved. Retrieving Com Buoy messages. Messages retrieved. Artificial Intelligence fully operational and within parameters Commander."

There was silence for a moment longer.

"I would feel better if the Commander chose someone else as Chief Pilot. Lieutenant Moreau never listens to calibration requirements."

"Yeah, that's Edi all right," Joker muttered. "Couldn't we just have spaced her Data chip? No, we had to save it."

"You were the one who made a lunge for it, Joker," John remarked.

"Well that's irrelevant! It's in the regulations!"

"Sure," John acquiesced. "I'll be touring the ship."

"See you tomorrow Commander!" and with Joker's cheerful goodbye, John Shepard began to move.

The words of Moreau weren't however wrong: the ship was massive. The mere modules occupied a good chunk of the Captain's exploration, but what truly held the cake were the massive walkways settled throughout the entire ship's length and on various levels of height. Touring the entire ship wasn't different than ending up lost in one of the maze-like corridors of the orientation tests for Marine academy.

He wasn't going to memorize the name of the entire crew, but he could do with what he had. Along the way he spotted several terminals with hologram functions, probably to grant instant communication through the various sectors in the event of pressurization. The Leviathan worked on the same wave of thought of the Dreadnoughts: modularity and redundant systems. Until the ship detonated, everything could be used anywhere.

Even from their cabins, the captains could easily maneuver the ship should they wish for it. Not that any captain worth his salt found himself anywhere further than the command bridge or the battle bridge during battles, but still…

He climbed a ladder, before settling his right foot on the nearby ledger and then moving across a small chasm —where a bunch of cables passed through to reach only god knew— until he finally reached the engine section of the Dreadnought.

The massive Eezo core hummed quietly in its inactive state, as the Anti-Matter generator was instead completely silent. Nobody would have guessed that within the reinforced alloys and protective materials stood Anti-Matter, the single most powerful source of energy and devastation Solforce had gotten their hands on.

An Anti-Matter warhead was enough to tear apart an entire city…and create a canyon.

The Engineers stood at attention at his passage, but he didn't stop to chat. He simply moved further down, before retracing his steps backwards and reaching for the lower levels where the magazines were stored…at least, a good chunk of them.

"I've got Engineering, Battle Bridge, Command Bridge, Medical Bay…Ai Core I suppose," John muttered. "This should be Armory," he followed the purple line all the way to a wide set of thrice reinforced hydraulic doors. The moment the doors opened, he was surprised to find a neat and overly organized section without any lingering crates or strange moving cranes.

"Commander!" a dark-skinned man with dark eyes stood stiffly to attention next to him. "It's an honor to have you down here."

"At ease soldier," John replied. "Jacob Taylor, right?"

"Yes, sir! Want the manifesto of the magazines?" a Datapad was thrust forward, one that John immediately opened and began to read through.

"So we have Fusion Warheads?"

"Unless we get retrofitted at Arcturus station sir, and that's without considering the need for at least a few thousand credits."

"No need then," John muttered. "We seem settled for a long-term campaign. How are the Battle Riders?"

"We have two cruiser-size ships docked sir. They are a Drone Carrier and a Boarding ship, equipped with long range missiles."

"Meant for long-range support I take it, before the Boarding ship comes in to capture the enemy's vessel."

"That they are sir," Jacob admitted quickly. "Unfortunately that means that we don't have enough Assault shuttles to carry out planetary invasion."

"We'll have to steal them from the enemy if it comes to that," John acquiesced. "I doubt we'll start a planetary invasion however…I think we'll be doing a show of force towards our enemies. Maybe we'll strike the Batarians in the Terminus systems."

That was something that stressed John: he had no idea what mission the Director had in mind for him. Giving someone control of a Leviathan could only mean one thing: the opening of a war theatre. Leviathans were the flagships of the Solforce fleet. To lose a Flagship was the same as rending the heart of humanity, and because of that they were rarely seen anywhere but in the most massive of fleets.

To hand him over only a Flagship without a fleet however…

"Commander," Edi piped in from a corner. "You are required in the Communication Room. Established Time of Arrival: thirteen minutes. Follow the lights."

He saluted Jacob, before leaving as fast as he could. Maybe he'd manage to not arrive late at his first meeting with the Director.

At least, he supposed that was the case.

_Solforce Director_

_Jack Harper_

He smothered the cigar's tip in the ashtray, cracking his left hand's knuckle as he gave out an exasperated sigh. Every second was precious, but he couldn't expect a Captain to be available at a moment's notice. He knew that too: he hadn't climbed to his seat because he had been a politician.

In Solforce rank wasn't given like candy, it was earned. The rank of Director wasn't something the heavens bestowed on the charismatic, but something Hell birthed from the pits of blood and sweat.

Morbidly, he checked once more on the Datapad with the casualties of Eden Prime. Project Ancient hadn't been compromised, and while the loss of the Prothean beacon had been unacceptable, the Ancient itself would probably off-set the risks.

Once the alien turned to their side, of course.

He flexed his fingers, his patience slowly growing thin as the hologram flickered back for the first time. Commander John Shepard finally appeared in front of him, his breath uneven as he had probably run the entire length of the Leviathan to reach him.

"Commander," he began. "Have you acquainted yourself with your ship?"

"I have, Director," John replied quickly. "Orders?"

"Good," Jack nodded slightly. No need to keep up the casual tone. Straight to the point was always better. "The Citadel's races refute to be implicated. They claim the Geth were an AI that rebelled, drove the Quarians off their worlds and then dropped out of the radar. To make our displeasure known I have assigned Admiral Anderson with the Twenty-Ninth fleet _Subjugation_ to escort Ambassador Udina to the Citadel. While the show of force and the diplomatic relations will work, you will have a time-span of three days to find and recover from the Terminus System the following key figures."

A set of names and numbers appeared on his screen, which he knew John would be receiving too.

"First, you will head to Omega. You will acquire a Salarian named Mordin Solus and a Krogan named Wrex Urdnot. They are both implicated in project Ravaging Horde. You will then make your way to Noveria. There you will find and retrieve Matriarch Benezia and her 'pet' experiment. Finally, I expect you to reach for Feros, and retrieve Subject Zero."

An image passed from his screen to that of John. The man's eyes widened for a moment, before they settled on a firm façade of steel.

"Yes, Director."

"You are hereby authorized to use force, planetary annihilation and right of Course. You will receive further orders once your current objectives are complete. Furthermore…" Jack took a small breath, before clasping both of his hands together. "You are hereby authorized to ignore the Curtain Law."

"Director," John nodded stiffly. "Orders confirmed."

"Remember, John," the Director said then. "Repensum est Canicula."

"Per Ardua, Ad Astra!"

And then the connection was broken.

Another hologram appeared in his room, a Turian body and face smirking and confidently posing itself. "So," the Turian drawled out. "Has everything been…prepared?"

"It has," Jack acquiesced. "We will not lay waste to Palaven, as long as the Hierarchy surrenders unconditionally."

The Turian nodded slowly. "I will hold you to that…Director."

"Keep me informed on Saren's movements," the Director retorted.

"Nihlus? You there?" another voice broke in close to the Turian, who immediately shut off the conversation. Jack Harper just leaned back on the chair, exhaling as he moved his right hand to his uppermost drawer of the desk. He removed from within it a photo, inserted into a wooden frame. His tired eyes scanned the figures rested behind the thin glass panel, and as his left finger gently touched the glass as if he could actually caress the faces behind it, he shut his eyes for a moment more.

"_We're the Thirteenth Division men! I expect no less than utter Victory!" their Commanding Officer, before their first deployment._

"_Hurrah!" their answer to him. A scream of victory._

"_Move it Harper! We don't have all day!" duffel bag, hastily made and thrown at him._

"_Come on Core, give the boy some slack!" running around the field, under the gaze of their team leader._

"_I think she has a thing for you, Harper." The mat of the gym, the hurt of the bruises on his body._

"_Shut it, you baboons!" sun, clouds, blue skies. It had all seemed so easy._

"_Make…Them…Pay." Blood. Gore. Guts on the ground. Quickened breaths. Wounds, blood and claws. Plasma bolts. Mechanical noises. Tanks being torn apart. Burned flesh. _

"_You did well." Medals. Metal pieces. There is nothing of worth in a medal that chinks against your chest, when your heart is hollow._

"For the Thirteenth," he whispered then opening his eyes.

"For revenge."

_Liara T'soni_

She felt sick again. Her lower limbs hurt. Her back burned. Her breath was ragged. Still, she had come out the least worse for wear. Radiation poisoning wasn't something she had ever felt before, but she knew that the continuous nausea and feelings of weaknesses weren't just a passing trend. She wondered if this was how some biotics felt, when they ended up having their cancer cells removed with Chemotherapy.

She retched on the nearby basin, the machinery twirling as it emptied back in space. They had left the Sovereign for Noveria, where her mother was. She had been brought to the most secure hospital on the planet, in critical conditions as she was. She wondered how Saren had managed to survive, but then again he had been a Spectre while she…she had barely been anything more than an archaeologist.

She still remembered the screams of Nihlus about taking cover. The missiles hadn't managed to hit the shuttle, but they had detonated with enough strength to slam their heat and radiations through space and against their onboard hardware.

The shuttle wasn't shielded against Emps.

They had literally crashed in the hangar bay, but thankfully the Sovereign had managed to get them away from the system before the Solforce reinforcements had arrived.

Liara didn't know about the Geth losses, but she actually hoped they hadn't risked everything only to save her. She doubted it. She really doubted her mother would have moved an entire Geth fleet only to save her. They hadn't even had a talk in decades.

She closed her eyes and shuddered. It had to have been the fault of the radioactive rays, but her back hurt even worse where the small Solforce implant had been placed. It hadn't detonated, but the pain was unbearable most of the time. She was hooked up on painkillers so strong she barely could keep her own conscience for more than a few seconds, but when she did it was only pain.

Her mind blurred through figures and half-formed images.

Strange Crow-like pictures of giant creatures, twice as tall as a Krogan and with heavy limbs…they haunted her with their sharp screeches and strange floating weapons. They looked beautiful with their multi-colored feathers, and yet terrible with their sharp beaks.

Ferocious snarls and steel-like claws belonging to massive furred varrens snapped her mind-self to run, as powerful waves slammed her across a star-lit universe filled with devastation and ruin.

Steel-like figures surrounded by blue streams of data and metallic bodies buzzed numbers and tore apart living flesh.

Strange looking grey-skinned creatures with fins and tails swam in wide oceans, their powerful songs echoing through her brain as if she were just another voice in the chorus. Sadness and dread lingered all over her soul, as if they were crying for her pain in understanding.

The humming and clicking sounds of insects reminded her of what the Rachni could probably be, as songs of war mixed with those of dread, of lost crowns and sadness unending for the burned hives. The Hexes and the Hives twisted until they disappeared into the darkness of her dreams, substituted by strange humongous creatures with thick snarling minds.

Then the last of her blurry thoughts reached to her, intertwined with the power of fracture and the haunting screeches of Specters. The ferocious whispers of souls killed by the billions and demanding revenge and life where life was no longer meant to return.

She dreamed not of happy dreams, but of reality. Her body seemed to convulse as she watched it give way to the sickness that was spreading across it. She watched the machines blare and the beeps grow in intensity. She felt the pain again and she watched the universe spin around.

She looked at the galaxies move around, at the fight for survival, for victory and extermination. She looked and she felt sorrow.

And then she heard the small chattering of a tiny and squeaky voice near her. A living, breathing voice that asked for the pain to stop, for it to go away.

It was then that she realized that the implant Solforce had inserted in her wasn't just a mere machine.

It had been a living and breathing being.

And it still lived.

It pleaded and begged for her help. It demanded salvation.

What else could she do, but hug the tiny frame of…was it life to begin with? And simply embrace that small amount of genetic code as its own?

_That was probably the only reason…_

_The only reason she survived._

And when Liara opened her eyes again…

Her skin was pink.

And she knew what Rippers meant.

How she wished she didn't.

_Omega Station_

_Aria T'Loak_

"Repeat that," Aria's eyes narrowed at the Blood Pack's leader, a Krogan by the name of Wrex.

"I said we'll be leaving the station soon," Wrex said back. "We've got to get back to Tuchanka."

"You?" she raised an eyebrow. "All of you?"

"Yeah, all of us," Wrex grumbled. "We've been paid for something big."

"What of the Blue Suns? And what about Eclipse?"

Wrex shrugged. "Not my problem. The Blue Suns are leaving too though. Something near the Batarian Hegemony, or what little remains of it. For the Eclipses…they're Asari and Salarians aren't they? They'll probably be fine."

"You're upsetting the balance, Wrex." Aria retorted. "I thought I made the only rule of Omega clear."

"This is bigger than you, Aria," Wrex said with ease. Wrong thing to tell her.

She clenched her right fist, biotic powers flashing across it as she slammed a Push against the Krogan Battlemaster. Wrex just roared as he held his ground, a barrier flashing up within instants. The Push was absorbed and a Shotgun was now facing forward, against Aria's couch.

She stopped as the Krogan did too. She rather liked her couch. He didn't want to mess with her more.

"What could be bigger than me, Wrex? You've been a successful bounty hunter for years. Nothing is bigger than money."

Wrex shook his head slowly. "Something is, Aria. You should know it."

"Chief!" Aria's moment of reflection was cut close, as Grizz moved fast next to her. "We've got a human fleet hailing us and requesting permission to dock!"

"My ride has arrived," Wrex laughed out hard. "Time for me to go."

"One of their largest ships…It's…It's more than a kilometer's long, and it's not alone," Grizz added once more. "The guys at the docks are worried. It's like we've got the frigging Destiny Ascension parked outside."

Aria smiled.

"Well, let's go and meet them, then. I would really like to see these 'humans'…"

"Ha! You'd be surprised," Wrex smiled. "They look like Pyjaks most of the time, but you should see some of them fight!"

Wrex was outright giddy. Literally, the Krogan was actually half-running towards the docks with a smile on his face that could have probably been confused for that of a teen fan waiting for some high-shot actor or singer. Aria frowned in disgust as she walked to the docks. If Wrex had held a notepad, she suspected these 'humans' would have signed it for him and he'd end up happy.

A small complement of shuttles docked at her bays, something which was dangerously close to an invasion fleet. It was then that her eyes went beyond the docks, through the shields that held the station's atmosphere in check. The ships were holding themselves surprisingly close. She suspected they could have rammed into her space station with little trouble. Just to be on the safe side, she pinged with her Omni-Tool her guards to be on the look-out for trouble.

One of the shuttles was unloaded with giant creatures that rivaled the Krogans in height.

Those had to be humans, she supposed. Tall, with broad shoulders and covered by helmets and visors. Holding weapons in their arms and marching forward at a steady rhythm. It was a march meant to intimidate, but she wasn't Aria for nothing.

Then the march parted midway and a fairly smaller human came through wearing a cape of all things. He marched forward and looked at her for but a fleeting instant, before moving to the rest of the crowd that had in the meantime gathered.

"Urdnot Wrex?"

"That's me," Wrex grumbled taking a few steps forward. "You the Cerberus?"

"I am a Cerberus Operative," the man spoke with a smooth voice. He had pink skin and dark eyes, his head covered by a brownish fur that seemed incredibly thin. She wondered if she could get a scalp of a human to experiment with it.

"Commander John Shepard of the _Normandy_, I have also come for Mordin Solus. He should be expecting us." His gaze moved from the Krogan battlemaster to her, and he narrowed his eyes slightly if for a second.

There was something in those eyes she didn't like at all.

"On Omega, there is only one rule," she began smoothly, taking a few steps forward as she neared the Commander. She smirked as she watched the rest of the soldiers tense. "You don't mess Aria." She took a few more steps, now being extremely close to the Commander in question, who was still eying her with those eyes filled with a sentiment she knew well. Such eyes so filled with contempt and hatred weren't uncommon on Omega, but to burn with such a passion?

"And I am Aria."

"Well then, Aria," the Commander spoke next firmly. "Where is Mordin Solus?"

She smiled warmly. "Why don't we go and speak…somewhere private?" her voice was husky then. It had worked on over a thousand men who had believed themselves more powerful than her, even the patriarch had fallen for her charms.

"We are on a tight schedule," the man replied briefly. "It would be best if you were to cooperate. No need for gratuitous bloodshed, right?" he smiled then, but that smile was the same as that of a shark —one that was inherently familiar to her to boot. She smiled back.

"That depends," she acquiesced. "Would you prefer to have a bigger escort, before coming to have a talk with me?"

The human shook his head. "It will not be needed." He gestured to two guards. "Bring Wrex Urdnot to his quarters." Two more giant-humans walked forward at another of his gesture. "You two with me. The rest, get back to the ships."

"Yes, Commander!"

Aria narrowed her eyes. She huffed and turned around, heading straight to the closest bar. Her men had already understood —she didn't hire imbeciles— and the bar's owner was already setting up a couch and a small table with drinks. She supposed Asari drinks would work, and if they didn't…she doubted the human would actually take a sip.

She was surprised when the human actually took her invitation.

The man smiled as he sat down, and she just had to grit her teeth slightly. There was no fear in his eyes. There was no anger or nervousness. It was as if his meeting with her was…inconsequential, unimportant and unneeded.

"So, Commander Shepard?" she spoke slowly. "Tell me a bit about yourself. What makes you a…commander?"

"Rank is earned through merit in battle," the man replied. "The tally count on kills, the ability to command rising number of squads, to micro-manage," he folded his arms over his legs, "to think in multiple directions and reach the defined objective no matter the cost…That is what they tell people a Commander is." The human shook his head slowly.

"Truth be told, you just need to be the one with the loudest voice and the quickest thought."

"I can relate to that," she smiled. "Some people do not have the decency to even think before acting…but I find screaming distasteful."

"Sometimes a point needs to be laid across early," the human Commander remarked. "And ruthlessly displaying strength is one such way," there was the smile again. Aria frowned slightly.

"Another is to ask with honesty," the man shrugged. "We need a forward base of operation into the Terminus System. I have orders to either acquire this base with force or try the diplomatic approach first. We are willing to pay with 'credits' the possible repair works and what-not within Omega, but in exchange we demand not only discretion…but also assurance no unfortunate events will happen near my crew during shore leave."

"Omega has over seven millions people, of which at least a good half has a gun," Aria snorted. "What hope do you think you can achieve?"

"Are you familiar with biological warfare, Miss T'loak?" John asked back. "Now let us say we humans have developed a highly advanced cloaking mechanism, and let us say we have subtly hacked your entire system framework to ignore the arrival of a small concealed shuttle. Let us also add that said virus is not simply a Bio-Bomb, but an Assimilation Plague capable of _converting_ you all to _our_ thoughts and _our_ line of morality…as well as our race."

Aria narrowed her eyes.

This was preposterous. There was no way such a thing could be real. It would require…it would require nothing short than Prothean technology to its finest to work. And the Council races would intervene on this! Clearly there was no way…

"You don't really have such a weapon, do you?" she asked —her voice low and husky. "You're bluffing, badly, to catch my attention."

The Commander just opened his arms. "Try me."

"I might do just that," she smiled with a feral smirk, licking her lips slightly. "And I suppose the Blood Pack moving to a corner of the station to 'leave' was just a lie?"

The Commander nodded. "They are already securing Mordin Solus, our Intelligence agents are top-notch."

Aria twitched her right hand slightly. "If you weren't actually wrestling control of the station from me, I'd even consider bedding you."

"And if you were a human, I would actually consider the option," the Commander retorted. "That can still be arranged though."

A small vial appeared in the Commander's hands. "The contagion rate is of two-hundred percent. The virus remains active for thirty-six hours, afterwards it becomes inert. It also can grow like fungi on wet soil, to generate the breathable atmosphere of humans. It is thus self-sustained…and all that it would take would be breaking this tiny vial, and we'd be talking between humans, rather than between human and alien."

Aria breathed slowly. "You made your point, Commander."

"Good," John remarked. "Should someone wish to be humanized, if only to prove the virus effectiveness, then they will without a doubt find near the Normandy's assigned docks a small Human department complete with the virus itself. Needless to say what would happen should it be infringed, right?"

"Indeed," Aria breathed. "You do not care about the rest of the station? Truly?"

"No, to control an entire human station would require us to leave here a fleet, and sincerely? We know you can do a better job in keeping the Spectres and the Council away if we just leave this as a happy commercial decision. You will be our smoke-screen with the Council Races, and in exchange you will be rewarded." The human stood slowly up. "I think we can both earn something from this deal, isn't that right, Miss T'Loak?"

"Yes," Aria exhaled out slowly. "I think we can."

She stood up then, moving towards the outside of the café as the Commander followed soon after.

She gritted her teeth in frustration as she announced a commercial deal with the Humans.

The feeling of having a gun pointed to her head, however…maybe Tevos would enjoy knowing it? Still…it would require some working to pinpoint just who were the spies among her people.

The people were surprised, she could see it. Yet the humans remained stiffly firm in their moves. She watched with indifference as Bray finalized the agreement, and she retreated. Her hands moved around her arms clutching herself as if she was just about to fall ill and die.

Had she caught a fever?

_Council Chambers_

"Saren, Nihlus, report," Sparatus' voice filled the air, as Tevos and Valern watched the two Spectres holograms. "Tell us you've found the Conduit."

"We are heading towards the Mu Relay, Councilors," Saren spoke calmly. "We have left Matriarch Benezia behind with her daughter, as Dr. T'soni suffered the most from the radiation damage. Nihlus and I are still operative however."

"Do not push your body too hard, Saren," Sparatus remarked. "You are our voice with the Prothean VI. Have the Protheans delivered another message?"

"They have," Saren said. "The Geth will attack near the Solforce borders, to distract the humans. It should buy us enough time to reach for the Relay, and with the Prothean VI help, I am sure of the planet we must reach."

"Do humans suspect the council's involvement, councilors?" Nihlus spoke then, his voice low and raucous. "I doubt we were seen on the planet, however…"

"No," Tevos spoke next. "We have received disturbing news of a gargantuan ship headed off towards the Terminus Systems however. 'Leviathan' is what they call it. You should refrain from engaging it if possible."

"Indeed, Sovereign has suffered extensive damage just by fighting against one of their Dreadnoughts, and I cannot apparently understand how they can pack such power in such small sizes," Saren's voice was clipped and to the point, but Nihlus chuckled all the same.

"What is it, Nihlus?"

"Nothing Saren, nothing."

Valern blinked its Salarian eyes once, understood the horrible joke and refrained from explaining it.

Sparatus coughed. "Keep us updated on your activities Saren. We will do what we can to keep Solforce away."

"Yes council."

The holograms flickered away.

"They use them well," Valern remarked quietly. "Something which we haven't done since the Rachni Wars."

"With the Prothean fleets on our side, Humanity and the aliens they _protect us_ from will no longer be a concern!" Sparatus exclaimed.

"I just hope we are not swapping a guardian for another," Tevos whispered. "We know nearly nothing of the Protheans but what ruins we have found and what little Saren has told us."

"I trust Saren implicitly," Sparatus said. "He would never betray the Council."

"Indeed," Valern blinked.

"It is irrefutable."

_Migrant Fleet, Humanity Border Zone._

"Tali, grab my hand!" her father actually screamed as the bridge of the Living-ship was torn apart by a metallic slug the size of a small moon. She fell backwards as splinters and sparks flew everywhere, before a sharp tug brought her back against her father's chest. The artificial gravity generators had gone away, leaving their liveship in Zero-gravity.

"We must get to the escape pods," her father spoke quickly. "You must warn the council."

"What about—" another rumble shook the walkway they stood on, as fire erupted from a nearby pipe splattering the brains of a marine against the metal.

"There's no time! Get in an escape pod: I'll message them to pick you up. You must deliver Saren's betrayal to someone! Even if it's humanity…" another rumble.

"We lost the _Survival_!" a panicked Quarian screamed nearby. "They're decimating us!"

"Keelah," her father whispered as boarding pods crashed through the metal ceiling, dropping inside Geth platforms that began to open fire indiscriminately upon the civilians trying to evacuate. He pushed her down against the corner. "Listen Tali: reach through the waste disposal unit. Grab this," he began to clasp at his own oxygen supply.

"Father? No! You can't…"

"Please," her father pleaded. "I already lost your mother. Grab it and…I hope you can find happiness somewhere else." He pushed his own oxygen supply into her hands, before punching the waste disposal unit and ramming her inside.

Tali fell through the conduit until she reached a breached section, after which she could only flail around lifelessly in the depth silence of space.

Her suit would recycle the oxygen indefinitely, but her father…the bosh'tet had given her a mean to move through empty space to try and reach another one of the ships.

She didn't cry as she slowly began to let the air go from the tip of the supply's tube. In the deafening silence of space she could only stare as the Quarian fleet was torn apart by Geth Dreadnoughts, before a shuttle flew close enough for her to hatch on. The fact that Human space was devoid of Mass Relays worked to the Geth advantage, as it prevented long-range communication.

The shuttle brought her in before departing to the closest cruiser. She clutched her knees with her arms as she slowly sobbed.

"Why?" she whispered. "Why now?"

"Tali'Zorah, we must be strong in this moment of blight," the Quarian that spoke held an old voice, and as a small cough filtered through she widened her eyes and looked up. The marine had a bloody patch on his shoulder, and was wheezing out every word. "We have survived the loss of our home world. We have survived the Geth once…even now we are sending help messages to the Humans…even now we are escaping death's clutches. My only regret…"

There was a wheeze and a small chuckle.

"My only regret is that I'll never have the chance to see the sun rise over Rannoch…" he coughed, harshly.

"But you have that chance child," he hissed through gritted teeth. "Never forget it."

And then the breathing grew coarser and louder, until the Quarian's chest simply…stopped moving.

Tali tensed for a second, before slowly stumbling to her feet. She walked to the head of the shuttle, and sat down at the co-pilot's seat.

"He passed away," she whispered quietly to the pilot.

"Keelah Se'lai," the Quarian replied slowly.

"Keelah Se'lai," she acquiesced.

And silence filled the shuttle.

**Author's notes**

***explosions***

***backstabbings***

***menaces of biological purging***

***as always, shadenight123-dot-blogspot-dot-it for author's notes***


	8. Breaking Point

The Sword of Humanity

Chapter Eight

_Council rooms_

"Ambassador, we do not know how you obtained this…proof, but it clearly is a forgery!" Sparatus exclaimed. "The Audio logs cannot prove anything, and the other voice? Matriarch Benezia cannot be involved! She is one of the most prominent members on peace-talks with your empire."

Miranda Lawson watched calmly as the Turian councilor spoke. She was dwarfed by the size of her protectors, clad in the Brawler suit and equipped with self-detonating nuclear devices. She was always brushing death, but this didn't mean she would do her job with any less fervor.

She was perfection made human. Her father hadn't created her from nothing to let her make mistakes.

"Ambassador, this doesn't seem anything more than insane rambling," Tevos acquiesced quietly. "Saren is our prime Spectre. He has served the council well and for many years, and unless further proves are brought, there is clearly nothing that we can say about it."

"We understand concerns. Yet Saren not culprit. Forgery of Quarians probable. Their anger at Citadel Races undisputable." Valern spoke next, his voice clipped and to the point.

"We found no sign of lies from the rescued Quarians, and there was no forgery involved," Miranda ground out through gritted teeth. "However, if your claims are correct then should we not have the Spectre in question here, to rebuff the accusations?"

Sparatus snorted.

"He is currently occupied with another Spectre, working on an extremely important mission that is of no concern to Solforce."

Miranda raised an eyebrow.

"You understand that the Director will not take this pleasantly," she calmly stated. "I am sure your Spectre could find the time to write back his defense, unless he is behind enemy lines? In which case, where would he be? The Terminus Systems? Solforce space?"

"Preposterous. We know the rules of the armistice. Spectres are undercover in citadel's space." Valern remarked.

"So how could he speak of the Conduit? How could he speak of the beacon?" Miranda pressed on.

"As said before. Audio near accurate forgery. Normally indistinguishable. We will verify authenticity if pressed but can be nothing less than forged." The Salarian spoke quickly, its eyelids closing and opening a moment later.

"We must take the battle back to the Geth, Councilors. Clearly the way they travel through relays unchecked is dangerous." She began to tap on her Datapad while keeping her eyes trailed on the council. "Maybe because they're machines, you cannot detect them? We will have to send the Terminus System patrolling fleet then…"

"You'd leave us with the threat of the Batarian Slavers!" Sparatus roared.

"Well Councilors, whose fault is it that you cannot seem to come up with a decision?" she replied. "Is Saren a traitor, or not?"

"He is not, and no amount of petty bullying will make the Council change his opinion," Tevos spoke next. "Should any Solforce military vessel pass through the Citadel Space again, we will not hesitate to retaliate."

It was Sparatus who actually added afterwards, with a serious tone.

"You can, however, bring the war to the Geth...as long as no fleet is seen within two system jumps of any Council's races Homeworld."

Miranda brought up an eyebrow for just a second, before a small smile stretched on her lips.

"Then I will give your answer to the Director. Know that, most probably, total war against the Geth will be declared. We thank you for your cooperation and understanding, Councilors..."

There was silence for barely a second…then Miranda Lawson turned and left.

None of the Councilors saw her press a button in her Datapad, giving the go-ahead to the Noveria operation.

_Leviathan SFS-001 Normandy_

Commander John Shepard narrowed his gaze at the Datapad's news, his eyes scanning both the incoming messages and the holographic display of the galaxy in front of him. From his position on the Command Bridge he could clearly watch the tense shoulders of the officers around him, which probably mirrored his own.

"Feros will be left behind for the moment," he remarked. "Our objective at present is Noveria. We have the all-clear from Central Command! Geth presence detected by Secret Intelligences, activate Protocol Omega, all hands to battle station at all time. Noveria space is to be considered hostile territory until further notice."

"Aye, aye Commander," Joker retorted as he began to pinpoint their location through the console. "How are we coming in?"

"We don't have time to waste," he remarked. "The Eezo supplies bought from Omega will be put to use. Initiate Mass Effect, flight Lieutenant! Get us to Noveria!" John flicked a few holographic buttons, bringing up into the coms the Armory and Magazine supplies.

"Taylor, prepare the Cruisers for hostile encounters. Secondary and Tertiary crews are to be awoken from Cryo-sleep. Fourth crew must commandeer the battle deck, and get the Fifth crew on back-up duty."

He didn't wait for a reply, as he pushed yet one more button to get Engineering.

"Donnelly! Make sure the Anti-Matter's shielded and off-line! We're switching to Mass Effect!"

Another button, another push.

"Chawkas, set Medbay to code Red above!"

Once more, another section of the ship.

"Xavier Module is to come online! Joker section, you are to jam communications upon entrance!" he stood up, closing all windows of communication to open the wide and general one.

"Men and women of Solforce! The Council thinks Humanity blind and deaf! They will face our kind heart no longer! By the orders of the Director of Solforce, we are to initiate retaliation upon the Planet Noveria! All marines respond to Cruiser ship SFS-001 _Alpha_ and prepare for invasion! All Boarding Troops to Cruiser SFS-002 _Beta_!" He slammed his right hand curled in a fist against the open palm of his left one.

"Geth forces are attacking Feros as we speak. Geth forces are harassing our borders. The Council claims ignorance, but we have received intel that their top operative is cooperating with them! We will show them never to mess with Humanity again! _Memento Terra_!"

"Hurrah!" the exclamation of the rest of the bridge came back with strength, as there was a flurry of activity as the last check-ups were completed and people moved across the entire Leviathan.

Soon, sparks of blue flew throughout the frame of the ship, while the Mass Relay slammed them through a corridor of Mass Effect towards their destination.

It wouldn't take more than a few hours tops to reach Noveria. Time enough to prepare for a full strike…and get used to the Holo-Tank deeply seated within the Leviathan's private Ai Core.

He walked out of the Commanding Bridge, letting Pressly take the spot of Commanding Officer while he moved to settle into the 'tank'.

The Holotank was, simply put, a glass tube filled with a nerve stimulant liquid that granted the one imbued increased reflexes. It was extremely useful when maneuvering an entire fleet into battle, giving the Commander in charge quite a bit of a time span to make decisions. This also meant he could directly relay orders to the Cruisers, without resorting to the other ship's captains.

"Sir!" a female voice stopped him as he was just about to enter the half-section of the ship, and from there traverse down to the bowels and then back up. "I need permission to deploy!"

"Williams?" he stared at the woman incredulously. "You're still on medical leave! You should be in the med-bay, not out here!"

The two meters tall woman had both hands clutching her assault rifle, as the Brawler suit was apparently already equipped on her. Her face was set in a scowl, as she had yet to lower her visor. "I can fight, sir!"

"You have a cybernetic implant to get used to," John muttered shaking his head. "And your nerves still have to adapt! You're still on painkillers aren't you?" he asked sternly. "You're not going anywhere soldier. Not today."

"But in eight hours I will be fine, sir," she pleaded.

"The answer, Gunnery Chief, is _final_." He snapped back at her, before turning to the closest attendant on guard. "You! Make sure she gets back in the infirmary. She's on medical-arrest from this moment onwards," he spun once more to face Williams, before she tried to get some words in. "And I swear, Williams, you are close to becoming a Private any moment now. _Do not force my hand_!"

Snarling curses in his mind, he angrily grabbed the metal ladder that would lead him downwards, and left behind the stunned and silent woman.

He broke into a run, even though he really shouldn't have needed to. He was just about to pass by one of the storage areas, when he stumbled onto Wrex.

"Shepard!" the Krogan exclaimed with a stranger grin. "They told me there's war to be done!" the alien laughed out loud. "This," he held a Datapad in his hands. "Just pinged! Seems we're kicking the council in the balls! The Blood Pack is ready to help!"

John stopped for a moment, narrowing his eyes slightly. "Are you familiar with Boarding Pods?"

"Course we are," Wrex huffed, starting to move his arms open wide to loosen his shoulders. "We all fight close and personal, we of the Blood Pack."

"Good," he snapped his Datapad up and sent a message to _Beta_. "They'll be expecting you down in hangar bay two. Don't make them wait."

"Ah!" Wrex roared with laughter. "The boys will love it!" the Krogan marched to the nearby door and slammed it open. "Guys! I got us a fight against the council!"

Shepard didn't remain to hear the slander or the cussing, nor the general cries of dubious joy. "Was that wise, Commander?" Edi piped a few terminals away.

"We need to test their strength," he retorted. "See if they can work with humans."

"Understood, Commander," Edi spoke next. "You are too trusting though you were not with the Asari."

"They had no right to look human," he remarked at the next terminal. "Aliens are…aliens. They're cannon fodder, or genetically engineered weapons, but not humans. The Asari had no right to look human."

"Commander? I am not able to compute a logical reasoning," Edi beeped a moment later. "Please explain."

"I don't know," he replied calmly. "It just irks me. We fought Hivers. We fought Zuuls, Morrigi, Liir, Loa and Tarkas. We fought the Suu'lka. We fought Von Neumann machines and horrors of ancient wars. We lost our Homeworld…completely, not like the Quarians…and in the end…in the end we became this." He muttered. "The Asari didn't. They evolved with lifespans long thousands of years, of which they spend hundreds acting like _strippers_ in dingy clubs. A marine trained for three hundred years would be a weapon of murder. Their 'Asari Commandos' are _pitiful_. Any trained operative could take them down. They do not know suffering, they just bicker about 'peace' and 'everyone should lay down their weapons and join us in trade and mind-rape' and things like that."

"Commander, said parameters are in line with jealousy," Edi remarked.

"They are wasting away their lives," he retorted angrily. "They think the universe is filled with peace and love, and they do not even know what true turmoil is. They fought the Rachni and the Krogan, but never once did they come close to losing their homeworld. The numbers of their deaths? Those are pitiful! A single battle fought on one of the major beachhead colonies has numbers higher than all the deaths in the Rachni wars!"

"Commander, I am merely asking. I do not understand hostility without purpose for one race and acceptance for the other with no reason apparent."

"Edi," John breathed in slowly. "The alien is the enemy. Always. The human is not. Never. The alien may be your friend today and your enemy tomorrow. Do not care for his appearance: use him if needed and discard him when done. In the end all that matters is humanity."

"I see. Commander, if I were to say that all that matters is 'Artificial Intelligence', would I be acting as Solforce or Loa?"

John watched perplexed the flashing orb of blue, before letting the words sink in.

"You'd be acting like the rest of the universe, Edi: selfishness always comes first with the other races. If you had to save yourself by uploading your program to the net or saving a child, you'd save yourself. You can try and claim it was because of self-preservation regulations or laws…but you'd do it. That's being selfish. That's what the rest of the aliens have always been and will always be. They don't see 'Humanity' as equal. The Hivers saw us as food! The Tarka as an inferior race to submit. The Zuul saw us as slaves. The Liir as lab rats! The Morrigi believed us primitives. The Loa wanted to remove the 'excess carbon'. In the end Humanity is alone and will stand alone! Even against one another, even in the face of the direst perils! We refuse to be used again! We refuse to become yet once more the victim. We are the righteous avengers of all those who died before us! _WE ARE SOLFORCE_! _**AND WE REMEMBER EARTH**_!"

"Hurrah!" a marine who had been running through the hallway exclaimed, putting himself in the pose for the military salute. "Nice speech Commander!"

"Carlson," he remarked calmly. "How long have you been listening in?"

The marine remained quiet for a moment.

"The point where you verbally lashed out against the Ai?"

John narrowed his eyes for a moment, before nodding and gesturing for him to move along. He had wasted enough time.

He had a planet to invade.

_Liara T'soni_

Her skin was pink.

She had spent the last hours looking her own body all over; touching her head that seemed to now sport long curls of a strange silky thing that she felt were a part of her now, looking at her pink nails and even going as far as sticking her tongue out near a mirror to see it, in all of its red splendor…

She was human.

Her eyes were a deep blue, just like her hair that descended in curls and stopped midway towards her shoulders. She felt fine though, physically she was the perfect example of health.

Psychologically speaking, she was a wreck.

"I'm human," she mumbled. "Human. Human." She babbled. "How is that possible? What was it all about?" she turned around, her sense of balance slightly impaired –why were humans so tall? Couldn't they be as small as Asari to begin with?

She misjudged the distance and fell down with a startled cry.

The room she was in was wide and spacious. The digital clock on the wall marked the twentieth hour of the Galactic Time, and she was pretty sure the scenery from the window was that of Noveria's prime hospital. She felt her stomach grumble a moment later. She blushed, her cheeks taking on a slight rosy color as she watched herself on the mirror.

Liara couldn't just leave from the door. Her best bet was to wait for her mother or one of her men to come and get her, even though she supposed she'd have to explain the situation first.

It took her a moment to recollect herself, but once she did find the strength to stand back up, a powerful explosion deafened her and shattered the window of the hospital.

The windows, actually.

Her eyes widened as she watched a cloud of nuclear smoke and ash rise from the far off distance of Noveria, the snow that incessantly fell on the planet parting way to let in swarms of metallic white shuttles.

Shuttles she recognized the form of.

The screams were the first thing she heard once her hearing returned. Alarms went off in the hospital, as she found herself locked into the room before she could even reach for it.

"Please remain patient," the VI remarked. "The Medical Team will begin evacuation soon. Do not try and open the door." Liara's hands slammed against the metal door to no avail.

She gritted her teeth.

She flexed her hands by instinct, letting the feeling of her biotics run over her body as she prepared herself, before unleashing a powerful wave of bright…transparent energy?

The metallic door, the wall, the surroundings…they exploded outwards as she literally tore apart a good chunk of the Hospital itself. Her mouth stood open in fright as her eyes widened in fear for the damage she had caused. What if there had been people around?

She walked out of the remains of her room, just in time to hear gunshots coming at her direction.

"She came from Matriarch Benezia's daughter's room!" an Asari Commando screamed while pointing at her. If only she had waited five more seconds, they would have certainly reached her in time…and she could have explained.

"It's a human!" another Asari yelled. "Fire to kill!"

"No…I," Liara tried. The bullets from the Commando's submachine guns opened fire. She screamed as she brought both her hands forward. "STOP IT!" she cried. The next instant, whereas she had expected to feel her entire skin hurting from multiple gunshots, she felt nothing.

She opened her eyes and paled at the sight of the bullets flung and stilled in mid-air. "Oh Goddess," Liara whispered. "What have I…"

And then the bullets flew _back_.

The wall of lead and steel slammed against the Kinetic barriers of the Commandos, not as much wounding them as simply overpowering their mass and flinging them off their feet and backwards, across the hallway.

"Oh Goddess, are you all right?" she tried to move closer, only for the corridor to creak and break in half from the repeated usage of her…abilities?

An Asari raised herself from the ground, lithely charging across the broken corridor to slam and tackle her on the ground, before trying to pummel her face with a biotic enhanced fist.

A laser shot tore apart the Asari's head before she could even finish her incoherent rants.

Next to the broken off wall of the hospital, one of the Solforce shuttles floated by. The backdoors opened in a second, and a couple of Human Marines emerged and landed near her.

"Command! We've got…we've got a POW here!" one of the marines remarked.

"Get away from me!" Liara recoiled, scared out of her wits.

"Calm down now," the other marine was a woman; the voice was trying to be soothing even with the menacing suit. "You're safe now soldier."

Liara tried to bring her arms forward once more, to try and use her strangely morphed psionics. A small push was what she managed to obtain, not even enough to faze the soldier.

"Psionic confirmed," the female marine said to the male. "She's confused," she added as an afterthought. "Thank God we came around to check. Think there are others?"

"Ask her, I'm preparing a Medivac to get her out of here," the male spoke.

Liara's eyes closed shut. This was a bad dream. This was a really bad dream. She couldn't be human and Noveria couldn't be under attack. This much was clear. There was no other reason. Really, there couldn't be another reason.

"Are we…" she whimpered. "Are we at war?"

The female marine chuckled. A light chuckle that came out as amusement, even in the face of being surrounded by burning buildings and dying people, even as nuclear fallout fell from the skies and thousands died beneath Solforce's attack…even then, the chuckle was of amusement.

"Sweetie, we're always at war. It's the first thing they teach us at the Academy," she said with a cooing tone, like a mother talking to a child. "Now, let's get you out of here and back to safety, all right?"

"Ask her if there are others around," the male curtly butted in. "We've got the Commander on line."

The female marine stilled for a moment, before nodding.

"Listen to me," she turned to Liara, grabbing her face with both her hands. "Were you with others? Are there other prisoners?"

"N-No!" Liara exclaimed. "I'm…" —I'm an Asari— was clearly not something she was going to say.

"All right, Commander did you copy? No humans remain on the planet. Understood Commander. It will be done." The male marine turned to the shuttle and gestured something. The pilot understood, because the next instant it moved so that its back was closer to the crumbling side of the Hospital.

"Take her aboard. We'll be setting off the explosive charges here."

"I think this is a densely populated area anyway," the female marine quipped as she firmly grabbed Liara by the shoulders. "Don't take too long."

"Wouldn't dream of it. I'll link up with the third column. They're advancing across the city and towards Peak Fifteen."

"Uh, oh well," the female pushed Liara on the shuttle, gently dropping her on the nearby bench —which was cold as hell, since she was wearing the hospital gown only and nothing more.

"Damn, you're getting blue from the cold," the female marine remarked offhandedly. She made a small nod, hoping she wasn't reverting to her Asari form in that precise moment.

The world couldn't be that cruel, right?

A warm blanket appeared from one of the compartments of the shuttle. It was made of a strange silvery substance that flowed like silk and was warm the moment it was put on her shoulders. She curled up inside it instinctively, before slowly starting to doze off.

"Don't worry," the female marine said again in a low voice. "They'll pay for what they did to you," the woman gently caressed her head, patting it as if she were a child. Strangely, the simple action was soothing to her very bones.

Dozing off, Liara's mouth spoke before she could even connect the dots of what she was saying.

"_Repensum est Canicula."_

Revenge is a bitch.

How had she known that, though?

_Commander Shepard_

The Holotank was made of green tinted glass, while the liquid he floated in was transparent. He didn't need to breathe or eat as the substance sustained him and delivered oxygen directly to his body. His hands moved as if he was some sort of Orchestra director.

His right hand moved in a horizontal swipe and the Assault Shuttles of the Cruiser Alpha burst through the incoming military Frigate and tore it apart like ravaging locusts. He could hear the music surround him as the violins increased their tempo, followed by his heartbeat increasing and time seemingly slowing down to a crawl as he redirected the Cruiser _Beta_ to invade the planet's communication station. The Mass Relay of the system was barricaded by the actual ships, while their ordnances were unleashed from afar.

A Salarian Cruiser tried to make a break for the relay, its kinetic armor withstanding the barrages of missiles thrown. He ordered the Leviathan's portside to fire the entire armament.

Laser beams tore the emptiness of space with their might, as they cut through the ship as if it was nothing more than butter. The detonation happened in a split second, and yet no noise reached him as the camera feed turned off to move him back to the land situation. Everything was so slow that to him it looked like they were crawling about, not actually running or pushing through.

He watched as the boarding pods connected with the metal walls of the Communication station, the Joker section of the Leviathan having successfully jammed their only way of asking for help.

Those who rely only on one type of technology will never survive the war.

Without the Mass Relays, communication was impossible for the Council Races. Jamming the Relay itself was tricky, but no different than actually activating it. By simply overlapping the activation sequence with random bursts of nonsensical data, the relays' mainframes could not send anything because they had to repeatedly purge their memories.

The problem was that the Leviathan had to remain stationary near the Relay, but if any ship managed to get that close…like the Salarian Cruiser, then the volleys of laser fire would tear them apart in seconds.

"Blaster lasers ready," Edi piped at normal speed. "Communications still blocked at 99.89% of functionality."

"Increment static noise," he rebuffed the Ai. "Keep only side thrusters under active AI controlling for the moment."

"Understood Commander. Hacking of Hospital Mainframe yielded no results. Jane Doe currently being researched in Solforce Mainframe."

"Scratch that," he retorted. "She's coming up. We'll ask her once she's here."

"Affirmative Commander Shepard. Alert. Message priority One from Solforce Shock Team Three, Lt. Kaidan Alenko requiring Code Alpha permissions."

"Patch him through."

"Commander! We've found Matriarch Benezia laboratory on Peak Fifteen. The staff is cooperating, but there's a Geth presence that's out for blood. They cloned the Rachni of all things!"

By the time the lieutenant had finished speaking John was already prepared to give out orders.

"Have a team grab genetic samples. Take the head of the project prisoner and whoever has more information on it. Once you've brought them back, _tank them_. Get Matriarch Benezia alive if possible, but shoot to kill if you can't. Edi, patch Wrex through."

"Shepard," the grumbling voice of Wrex came a moment later. "I was killing Salarians when your Ai said it was urgent we talked." There was no real malice in the voice, if anything the Krogan seemed genuinely happy.

"A facility on Noveria has yielded interesting results on Rachni clones. The Krogans fought them before: have any helpful hints?"

"Shepard? You're speaking like a Salarian, you know that?" Wrex commented. "Wait a moment. Rachni!? There are Rachni on Noveria!? Oh those goddamn bastards!" he yelled in the microphone. "Shepard, listen, the Rachni are a _bad_ thing. The stories say they could easily prepare a fleet within a week at the apex of their glory, and that if it hadn't been for the Krogans' uplifting, there wouldn't even be a Council left today…you must destroy them all!"

"Understood Wrex," Shepard remarked. "Percentage of station conquered?"

"Uh? Well, I didn't think you'd be so easily convinced," the Krogan's voice was actually perplexed. "Station's nearly ours. A few resist but they're surrendering."

"Once the station is completely ours, shoot all the prisoners," he replied with a clipped tone. "We take no prisoners."

"What? There's nothing fun in shooting an unarmed Pyjak!"

"We take no prisoners Wrex. We are sending a message to the Council with this action. They are protecting the Geth. They are protecting Saren. We will not stand by and let them act with impunity as Solforce is harassed by their own allies. They think us stupid, Wrex…do you want them to fear the name Krogan once more, or do you prefer them to believe your race's might a thing of the past?"

Wrex said nothing for a few minutes. Silence stretched thin, until in the end the reply came tersely.

"Fine Shepard, we'll do it."

"Good."

He closed off the connection with Wrex, before opening that with Kaidan.

"Lieutenant, you are to secure whatever Rachni adult you can and send it to the _Alpha_ Cruiser in containment. This is priority Cerberus: except for your team, nobody else is to know. Do _not_ fail me."

"It will be done, sir."

"Commander Shepard out," the exchange done, he turned back to the battle. The enemy had reorganized itself and was pushing forward towards the station, probably in an effort to counter-board it. He sighed and flicked two fingers in that direction.

The _Beta_ Cruiser activated its anti-matter engines and flew, soaring like a bullet in the emptiness of space, as it closed onto the entire scrambled fleet of merchant ships and private yachts. The few military vessels were the first to fall, their kinetic barriers useless against plasma beams and lasers.

This wasn't a battle.

This was a simple mindless slaughter.

He watched the next volley of missiles launch, flying blindly and attacking the planet itself as nuclear detonations visible from orbit spread across the icy world. Settlements which did not have humans were prioritized, the radiation waving throughout the air and killing or slowly poisoning all that it came across. The ice caps would melt soon, and eventually Noveria would crumble and collapse beneath itself.

It would be a nice place for a Colony…the planet was big enough, and depending on the end result colonization while costly would give them a war benefit in case of war…since the Salarian systems weren't far away from the planet in question.

"Commander, I am detecting Space-Time distortions from the other side of the System. Possible enemy fleet. Signals estimate numbers to be twenty Cruiser class ships and twenty-seven Dreadnought class ships. They do not respond to Solforce Hail."

John frowned. If it had been from the Relay, he would have understood. If it had been from Solforce fleet, he would have understood.

Time slowed down to an extreme crawl as his brain tried to patch up with what he knew. Space-Time distortions were common with Node-Lines. If it wasn't responding, either they were a stranded fleet finally coming back with the crew in Cryo, which was doubtful…

Or they were the second space travelling species to utilize Node-Lines.

"_CODE SUU'LKA! ALL CREWS TO AWAKEN AND PREPARE FOR BATTLE! RECALL BACK ALL FORCES_!" he snarled as fast as he could, the colors of the Holotank turning dark red as his heart beat began to accelerate even more. Hastily, his hands moved across the appearing holograms to personally direct the retreat efforts. His gaze lingered for mere instants on Alenko's situation, before slamming his right hand against the reinforced glass panel.

"Lieutenant! Get the hell out of there!"

Noises of gunshots were heard through the coms.

"Commander! We're engaging the Matriarch!"

"Then _KILL HER, TAKE HER BRAIN AND GET OUT OF THERE_!"

"Yes Commander," Kaidan remarked with a dry chuckle. "Glad to see you care so much."

John snorted and pressed a few more buttons. "Adams!"

There was silence in the Engineering section for a minute. "Sir?" Donnelly remarked.

"Right," John cussed. "Donnelly! Activate the Anti-Matter engines! Edi, send Node-signals to the Director! Code Suu'lka! I repeat, we have a Code Suu'lka!"

"Yes, Commander!" Donnelly answered back before the communication was cut. Moments later, and time slowly began to sped up again as his orders were executed.

The enormous hangars of the _Normandy_ opened up within seconds, just as the _Alpha_ and _Beta_ cruisers reacquired their ordnances and troops.

Edi piped in five minutes later.

"Commander, Suul'ka vessels recognized at the edge of the system. We will be within their scanners as soon as they enter normal flight speed."

"Reroute Jamming device on us. Make us invisible, Edi."

"Yes, Commander."

A video feed opened up soon afterwards, showing enormous holes in the space-time continuum being ripped open by a Cruiser sized Bore-ship of the Suul'ka.

"Cruiser Alpha: all clear!"

"Cruiser Beta: all clear!"

John watched in silence as the deformed and painful to watch ships of the most loathsome race ever to be birthed came through the hole, reaching normal speed velocity and immediately dashing for the planets filled with life.

Had this been a Solforce Colony, he would have laid his life down in an effort to stop them. Taking out the boreship would without a doubt give them time to regroup…but if he didn't, then the Zuul would have the ability to move further away from the system…unless they scavenged the Mass Relay.

Doing that would make it detonate however…

He took a deep breath.

"All Engines to Max! Set interception course with the Zuul's Boreship! Prepare Psionic module Xavier at my signal!"

He brought up his right hand, clenching it in a fist.

"It's a hit and run men! Do not fire until my command is given! Xavier module, operate and Stealth us!"

"Yeah, yeah," a voice remarked. "Rodriguez here. A pleasure meeting you too, Commander."

John didn't reply as he felt the ship move. No, more than simply moving, the Normandy sailed through the vast void of space as its entire armaments were primed and ready to fire. Like with the naval battles of the past, the Solforce technique was to always deliver the broadside.

At the same time however, Solforce had specialized in a variation of said move.

The Zuul boreship found itself beneath a barrage of point-blank lasers and missiles, coupled with the Heavy Laser beams, before it could even retaliate. The already damaged Cruiser was then slammed against the planet's surface by the Xavier module, just as the Leviathan spun upon itself, in all of its one kilometer and six hundred and more meters of glorious length, and sent forward the second volley tearing apart the ship's engines.

The next moment, the Zuul fleet retaliated.

Slugs of metal and mass drivers bounced off the reinforced armor of the Leviathan, as the point defense laser blasters fired upon the encroaching missiles.

"Concentrate firepower on the Dreadnoughts first!"

"Attention, Boarders incoming," Edi's voice clicked in. "Preparing Marines for counter-assault."

"Xavier module! Are you able to push again!?"

"Negative Commander, we're not machines!"

John growled slightly, staring at the incoming dreadnought that didn't at all seem willing to budge.

"Joker, can you pass us through them!? We cannot lose the Engine sections."

"Wait a moment, you're asking ME if I can make a LEVIATHAN pass through a Dreadnought fleet? Oh, geez, demanding little are you?" the Lieutenant Moreau barked back. "I'll need full access to thrust parameters Commander, and keep Edi away while I work."

"Permission granted," he said quickly as he watched a boarding pod blown off by the point-blank defense.

Lasers burst through the void, reflecting or striking the armor plates to create small craters the size of cars. Missiles made with crude materials impacted as they sailed through the emptiness of space, many exploding simply because they had been ill-prepared rather than because the lasers had shattered them.

"The FTL database gives us their designs as pre-dating the Conquest of Khalix," Edi spoke calmly. "They are probably an exploration force that simply never returned home."

The Leviathan slammed its upper side against a Zuul Dreadnought, the 'smaller' ship —still at over eight hundred meters— was pushed backwards by the strength of the momentum, before the Psionic push of the Xavier module hurdled her to crash against a fellow ship, creating a ship-wrecking ball that badly damaged a nearby cruiser before exploding.

"Solforce Three, Evil Mindraping Zuuls zero!" Joker's voice cheered through the coms of the Leviathan, as the marines tensed near the portside area of the fourth Recycling unit. A boarding pod was working its way through the steel armor in that point, and unless they were repelled somehow…

John gritted his teeth as Joker began spinning wildly from right to left, before making a somersault in space that made the entire ship creek under the strain.

"I swear if he wasn't the best pilot I had," John muttered as he held his body curled in fetal position, to prevent giving accidental orders.

"Ha! Watch this backflip! Not even the Stutter Warp can do this shit better than me!" The left side thrusters activated, the barrel roll in action literally letting two cruisers of the Zuul fire upon one another with their beams and mass drivers.

"Joker, get us to the Node-Line!"

"Aye, aye Commander!"

Finally, the last of the ships stood behind and beneath them, as the Normandy sailed through the air.

"Xavier module, can you engage a Mirage?"

"Mirage engaged, Commander." Three copies of the Normandy materialized around the ship. In sheer size and form, they were perfectly identical.

"Commander, we have a situation," a voice beeped in from the Cruiser Alpha. "The Rachni Queen, she's…"

"What?" John muttered. "Do the Rachni Queen…perhaps have the same connotation as the Hivers' one?"

"Yes sir, they appear similar." It was Alenko's voice who came next. "I secured her aboard but…she's talking. Like, she's using Psionic frequencies and I'm barely capable of understanding her, but she speaks of 'a song of oil and darkness' becoming stronger."

"Suul'ka," Shepard remarked calmly. "We'll have to interrogate her too. Any scientist gave us leads?"

"Chawkas is still tanking them; albeit with the chaos Joker is doing I doubt she'll progress fast enough. How's the situation out there, Commander?"

John looked at the radar, before slowly exhaling.

"I think we might move down to Code Tarka once we leave the system."

"So Commander, where do I set the course?" Jeff Moreau asked. "I mean, these guys have to have come from the Exodus Cluster, right?"

"I doubt it," John remarked. "You know how Node-Lines work for us Jeff…for the Zuul, they just point their boreships in a direction and hope to slam into another system."

"The bastards are a plague that should be exterminated," Pressly's voice cut through the coms. "We can reach Arghos Rho in a week and make our way from there with the Mass Effect, Commander."

"Very well, in the meantime maintain alert."

"Sir?" Chawkas' voice now reached his ears. "I think we've got an extra passenger aboard, and she's…well, confused and in shock I think."

"Right," John wearily sighed. "I'll be there in a minute. She's a POW of Noveria. They rescued her from a medical facility…probably a front for underhanded experimentations. Take her genetic tailoring and make sure she's calmed down by the time I come around to talk with her."

"It will be done, Commander."

John sighed.

So the Zuuls had slipped past the Curtain…

What had the Colonel of Ashes been doing?

_Solforce Director Jack Harper_

"Admiral Ashe," he smiled as he curtly greeted one of his top Fleet Admirals. "How are things proceeding on the Zuul front?"

"We let the bore ship through as instructed," the man remarked calmly. He was nicknamed as the Admiral of Ashes, because not only did his ruthlessness provide him with the firmest of beliefs against the aliens, but also because he had no problem leaving behind scorched earth rather than a planet with resources.

"This will do nicely," the Director acquiesced. "The Council will crack or be cracked."

"Sir, permission to speak freely?"

"Granted," the Director nodded.

"Rumor in the upper echelons is that we're getting aliens to fight the Hivers. Sir, that doesn't fit with me at all."

"Admiral, are attack dogs used or not in war? We can produce ten to twelve infants at the same time the Hivers produce two hundred. We need attack dogs with faster reproductive rates. Attack dogs whose children and children's children will all have the Genetical Kill-Switch installed. We are not allying with the aliens; we are assuming control of them!"

"Yes sir, I thought that would be the case," the Admiral remarked with a nod. "We have reconquered Hercules. The Zuul tore half of the city apart before they discovered our little surprises."

"Is the Weapon working as instructed?"

"On the Zuul? Definitively Director. Whatever the research department did to get it I don't know, but let them know they have the thanks of the Fleet of Ashes."

"Duly noted, Admiral. The Weapon _Thor _is classified however. Need to know basis only."

"Understood," with a stiff salute, the hologram disappeared.

It was then that his tired eyes moved to the incoming message from Commander Shepard. He probably knew already what he had written, and thus left it for later. Nihlus had already informed him of the Rachni and of Matriarch Benezia. The Mu Relay was easy to discern and see.

The point wasn't whether to stop Saren or not. The point was whether humanity would benefit from it in the long run.

Better let them have their hopes squashed, better let them see the 'Protheans' for what they were.

He pushed another button, and soon a hologram of a cloaked figure appeared on screen.

"Status Report."

"This form is weak," the voice remarked with a gruff expression. "An empire must always replace another, but how this weak form managed to do so surprise me."

"Are the projects still there?" he asked again.

"Yes Director. The Crucible is present. We never completed it…but you might stand a chance," the figure seemed to look at him for a moment more, before slowly adding.

"With it, my people will have their revenge."

"And the alien races will bow to the might of Humanity, as it is meant to be," the Director muttered then, before closing communication with the figure.

He took a deep breath, and then lit another cigar.

Out of the windows, next to the sun of the system, the new fleet was being armed.

He eyed the bulk of the fleet and smiled briefly.

Humanity would not be defeated. Humanity would never bow down to the enemy.

Humanity…Humanity would always emerge victorious, no matter the costs.

And so Jack Harper smiled as he waited for the Council's move.

_The Black_

The song…

_Shifted_.

It was…

_Horrible_.

The screams…

_Died._

Silence.

_It deafened._

And the fleet…

_Moved_.

**Author's notes**

**You didn't expect this, did you?**

**Now, I'm offering the readers a choice. The plot won't change, but the 'talk options' of Shepard can be in the Paragon or Renegade line from henceforth. I have different endings envisioned. Make your pick, I'll choose at the end…**

**And you will Reap what you Sow.**


	9. Being Human

The Sword of Humanity

Chapter Nine

John Shepard left his private cabin fully cleaned from the Holotank's stinky liquid, albeit tired beyond chance. He wasn't actually going to fall on the ground and start sleeping though —he had gone many days without sleep before. His drooping eyes guided him slowly towards the med-bay and towards the Jane Doe that had apparently been sedated into sleeping.

Dr. Chawkas was maniacally grinning, holding a brain the size of a small melon, by the time he opened the doors and entered. Near her, twenty-five tanks stood open, with twenty-four filled with a brain each. All of them were interlinked and filled with needles and sensors, before they united into a single thick cable that ran into the wall. John knew it went straight towards the Ai core and back, but then again he tried to do his best to forget about the 'future' for any Commander whose body failed them before they could effectively 'die' in battle.

Something about being a brain in a jar never appealed to him.

"Commander," Chawkas said with a small amused tone. "I'm just finishing the last one. The Matriarch's brain was slightly damaged, but I can't fault the Lieutenant. Apparently he had to shoot her in the face at least twice."

"Twice?" John snorted. "Do those monsters ever have an end?" he sighed, before his gaze travelled to one of the doors that led in the quarantine sector. "How's the Jane Doe doing?"

"She's fine. Physically at least. Psionically, she's off the charts by little. There were traces of Element Zero in her body…they probably were experimenting on the difference between Biotics and Psionics…the poor thing is traumatized."

"Her genetical makeup?"

"She's not a Replicant, Commander. The implications of that however…"

John bit his lip, before nodding in silence.

Replicants were used in the colony worlds further away from the 'core' of the Solforce Empire. Many marines were actually Replicants, given a new name and a new identity while in the 'tanks'. "So she's genuine? Parents?"

"They are not in the database," Karin shook her head. "Maybe they have yet to be adjourned, but that would mean…"

"Either her parents are both not of Solforce…but that's impossible, or she's…she was never registered before," John whispered. "Which means one of the Psionic facilities was breached. One of the infants kidnapped. One of the special Project ones to boot, since those don't result in the databases."

"You mean a tank bred Cerberus?" Chawkas muttered back in awe. "How did they manage to infiltrate Arcturus? That station is untouchable! There are at least three Leviathans at all times patrolling it with their fleets! The Sword of the Stars Flagship would…"

"Then what else?" he retorted. "Have you checked for the Kill Switch?"

"Ah, no, I haven't," Karin muttered. She placed the brain into the tank then, before pushing a button with her elbows near the desk she had been working on. A hologram of a DNA sequence appeared, and as the Dr. looked at it, John could see sweat starting to form on Karin's face.

"Mother of God," she mouthed out. "It's not there."

"She was kidnapped in the nursery, then," John replied. "She barely has the initial Genetical knowledge then," he shook his head. "It's a wonder she can even speak. She recognized the marines as allies at least."

"Probably when the battle raged her facility was breached, and she recalled through genetics how to escape," Karin suggested.

"It can be anything, Doc," John shrugged. "I'll have to warn the Director of this. I'll try and get Jane Doe to talk…we'll call her Jane for the moment, unless they somewhat named her."

"An alien name," Karin shook her head, clenching her right hand. "Poor dear."

"Well, if she wants to change it, I'll suggest Karin," John joked before stepping towards the quarantine area doors.

"Flatterer!" Karin teased back as she gave the all-right to the door, which opened with a slight hiss noise.

As he looked at the sleeping woman in quarantine, a memory slammed into his brain with the strength of a sledgehammer. He recoiled as if struck, closing his eyes shut.

_Screeching noises. Scythes capable of tearing apart a human in seconds. Sharp teeth and snarls of ferocious monsters, the likes of which only horror stories could speak of._

_In armor they moved one after the other, thousands upon thousands of Marines. Bullets that sailed across the air. Noises and explosions as the rubble could not block their advance. Giant machines falling down with the strength of a hundred tanks. Screeching noises._

_Dark red eyes intertwined with vicious malice rotten in their core. _

"_Born of Blood…"_

_Blood, red and crimson, flowed freely down the walls. A sharp white and black scene. Angered yells, he held onto a small weight to his side._

_He didn't know why, but fear was the only thing he was feeling._

"_The universe is out to kill you, recruits!" his instructor snarled at them. "But we won't let them win! Understand this! You are N7! You are the best! Whereas other fails, you succeed! Fear does not exist! You will never be afraid to lay down your life in the name of Solforce! Your limbs are offered to Solforce! Your heart is pledged to Humanity! Your brains are to serve mankind! For every man, for every woman, for every child who screamed to death as they watched their last moments! For every living human who watched death because we could not stop it! Never again! Never again will we lay broken! Never again will we lose! We are no longer weak! We are no longer the underdog! Show them your teeth! Snarl to the Zuul! Break the wings of the Morrigi! Snap the Tarka! Burn the Hiver! Electrocute the Loa! Reap apart the Liir! Fear no alien, fear no enemy, fear no Suul'ka. Fear nothing and fight! Fight for Earth. Fight for Humans. Fight for yourself. Fight for a future free of war! Nothing can stop an N7! Nothing can stop a Marine! Nothing. Can. Stop. Humanity!"_

He breathed, slowly. His eyes resettled on the woman. He blinked and brought his right hand to his brain, trying to hold back the pain of the headache. He remembered that instructor. Well, to be clear everyone remembered him. It was the basic training. It was genetically instructed. There was no time for training children in becoming soldiers. They could train their bodies, but their souls? Their souls had to be molded through genetics. Memories, thoughts, recollections…Replicants were taught how to be 'humans' in that way…

And from there, the knowledge was taught through the entire race.

The woman stirred as the IV stopped delivering the anesthetic.

"uhmm…" the woman moaned slightly, as he stepped forward and then slowly touched her forehead with the back of his hand.

"Ah," her eyes snapped open in an instant. She tried to stand, but the effects of the tranquilizers made her weak and woozy. "Urk…"

"Easy now," John began, holding her back with his right hand and grasping a cup filled with water with his left. "You're safe now."

"Ah…where am I?" she whispered, her eyes locking onto his as they were wide in fear.

"You're on the Leviathan-class vessel SFS Normandy, in the med-bay. I have to ask, do you remember your name?"

The woman frowned, her rarely seen blue eyes settling —blue eyes were extremely rare in Humanity— on him for a second more, before turning to look around.

"I…I'm called…" she muttered. "Lia."

"Lia?" he raised an eyebrow. "Close your eyes for a moment, Lia," he whispered gently. "Try and stop thinking. Close your senses…"

The woman watched him with a frightened expression, before complying.

"What's your name, soldier!?" he snapped out quickly.

"Liara, sir!" she opened her eyes wide a second after. Her right hand cupped to her mouth in fear.

"Specification, soldier Liara!"

"G…Ground unit force, sir!" tears began to prickle next to the woman's eyes as she seemed to be fighting the genetical makeup with all her strength.

"Hush, let it go," he replied gently letting his left hand pat the woman's head. "This is what you really are," he whispered. "Solforce imprints class and rank in Psion soldiers since their birth. It doesn't matter that the aliens gave you a name that isn't human. You're human."

She began to sob. "Shh, shh," he hugged her as he would a crying child. "Everything will be all right. You're safe now." He murmured with a soothing tone, humming a light tune. "You're with friends and family…" he sang a little tune alongside his words, "You're home little one, and no-one will take you away again."

She cried. She cried herself to exhaustion and beyond, trembling from the effort to remain awake and probably overtaxing herself. John just gently lowered her back on the bed, watching as tears still kept on falling freely. They had dared to call the woman Liara. Wasn't that the same name as that Asari doctor?

Could it be a common name between those of that species?

He stood up quietly, turning to leave.

"_THIS ISN'T A TEST! ALL HANDS TO DECK! ENEMY INCOMING!" Blasts and torn apart metals. Sharp glitters of sparks of molten steel. Blood gushing out._

"_Stand and fight!" a hand grasping his. "Stand tall men!" It didn't matter their perfection._

_Even perfect soldiers die._

"_We battle millions! We battle billions! We battle universes! Hold them away from the Command Deck!"_

_Bullets grazing his shoulders, his armor bouncing together with him as he slams his right fist in the guts of a Tarka. Screams of the enemy mix with his as blood flows from his mouth._

_A grenade flies in the air. Smoke fills the air._

_The small cramped quarters are a slaughterhouse of torn limbs and blood. A slaughter and carnage that no sane man could imagine._

_And there he stands on the deck. The Tarka vessel's guns are pointed at the Cruiser whose engines are destroyed. His hand clenches the gun. His teeth grit furiously. His eyes narrow._

_And then, he runs for the pod as the enemy's guns fire upon the broken Solforce ship._

_The explosion makes the enemy's pod fly back, and as the doors open…as the aliens look…_

_He fires._

_For his screams are those of Humanity. And within countless millions, within thousands of worlds…_

_His screams are those of who never yielded._

"_This. Is. War!" and the Alpha Tarka's face turns to mush as he charges through._

_The corpse of the Tarka is riddled with plasma as he advances with the alien's corpse as a shield. Over three hundred kilos of beast, and yet he lifts it through rage, through anger, through hatred. Bullets strike his companions. Bullets break shields, and where they fail his charging body does the job._

_He doesn't stop. He doesn't look back._

_His knife slashes and breaks. His fists bleed and break. His teeth snarl and chip._

_His muscles ache and his body bleeds._

_But he does not stop._

_And by the time he reaches their command deck, by the time he reaches their heart…_

_The planet is no longer theirs._

_And the screams just grow in strength._

"Commander," Chakwas' voice awoke him within seconds. He stumbled on his feet, looking around wildly. "I should have checked in with you," Karin remarked. "Psion tend to naturally deliver and receive the emotions of those around them. That's why she was sedated and in quarantine."

"Urgh," he grumbled. "Empathy was never my strength."

"Are you in need of counsel, Commander?"

"No, I'm fine," he remarked. "We have a mission to complete…" he breathed slowly. "And I won't die from the voices in my head."

"If you say so, Commander. I suggest you let Rodriguez talk with her."

"I'll send her along then," he whispered. He was just about to step outside of the infirmary, when he turned to look at the Doctor and murmured.

"It never becomes easier to deal with pain, is it?" his voice cracked slightly. "All this…this suffering, this pain…why can't our enemies just stand down and stop?"

"Commander," Chawkas replied slowly. "Maybe…maybe they scream too, but we cannot listen?"

"That's…that's preposterous," John shook his head. "They…they attacked first. All of them, they did first what we didn't. They are the ones at fault, not us! Why should we be the ones to deliver the other cheek!?"

"Someone will have to, eventually," Chawkas remarked. "Violence always brings forth more violence."

He said nothing more, and simply left.

He had to think.

_Liara_

It wasn't a dream. It wasn't a nightmare. She was again on a ship with Commander Shepard. She was human, and apparently her biotics were…they were…gone? Changed would be a better term but…

She shuddered and held herself tightly. There was a chill running all around her. It was cold. Empty and desolate it made her feel…sad. The door opened and suddenly there was warmth. It was controlled. Carefully hidden beneath layers of spikes, but it _was_ there.

A woman with dark curly brown hair entered, her dark eyes settled on her for a moment before a small smile appeared on her lips.

"Well, ain't you the scared little duckling! The name's Rodriguez and boy, you should control your emotions," she huffed, bringing her hand to wave in front of her. "I can feel them reek of despair from here."

Her eyes widened. "And here's the shock. Don't tell me those bastards didn't tell you anything?"

There was anger now, filtering through the air and reaching her. She was angry? Why was she feeling angry?

"Ah…let's take a deep breath," Rodriguez began once more. "You've got calm yourself. Psionics are the ability to mend reality based on the will of the individuals. People who can use psionics are 'natural receivers' of the thoughts and intentions of those that surround them. You feel anger? I feel your anger and get angry too. You feel me angry and you get angered once more. On the other hand if I calm myself, you feel calm too. Understood?"

She didn't. Biotics worked because there were Element Zero nodes within the Asari's own bodies. This was…preposterous. It was as if the Solforce version of Biotics worked only because there were other Biotics willing to work together.

"Yeah, you got the gist of it," Rodriguez nodded a moment later. "If we concentrate, we can actually share a sort-of telepathic link. I say sort-of because I can't read your mind, duckling, but that doesn't stop me from guessing that you're 'surprised' and then 'suspicious' and then 'perplexed'. The last one is generally because you understood but can't get to the end of your thought, right?"

"H-How?" she croaked back.

"That's…well, I don't know," she shrugged. "Psionics just…are. It's like asking what the meaning of life is. You can't get it. The Liir say that every voice sings, no matter what. So probably…we just guide the songs? I don't know…it's not like we can talk to a Liir and get some information from them."

"The Commander," Liara whispered then. "He was…sad?"

"Considering how sad you are? He probably relived some pretty bad experience." Rodriguez smiled wistfully. "We all get our scars, physical or mental, the longer we live. That's the problem with us biotics. When thousands die upon the planet we swore to protect…we _feel_ them. We feel the dying screams of thousands. We feel the millions rage and thirst for revenge…and many go mad after the first time," she whispered.

"I see," Liara awkwardly remarked. "But…if so, why not look for peace?"

"Peace?" Rodriguez snorted. "Have you ever seen your mother dismembered limb by limb because 'pain makes for a wonderful appetizer'? Have you ever watched your brother turned into food? Have you ever seen the cleaver descend upon your very own leg, because they wanted an appetizer?"

Rage and anger, mixed with bitter regret were the things Liara felt now. How could she even think of peace, when revenge was all this was about?

This was a vicious cycle. A cycle that couldn't be broken.

She breathed slowly. "What will happen to me now?"

"Now? We're getting you up to par and then on the ground team. For now just rest, they'll eventually ask you where you came from or if you can recall anything of who kidnapped you. We'll get reparations from the Council too."

Liara's breath hitched.

"Wow! Calm down! Nobody's going to harm you!" Rodriguez brought both of her hands forward. "You're home now. You're safe."

The only problem, to Liara…

Was that this wasn't her home.

_The Director_

He exhaled slowly as he clasped his hands together.

"We believed you," the Director remarked. "We went as far as granting you help," he added. "And yet not only did you lie to us…you stole from us too."

The holograms of the council flickered for a moment. "This is preposterous! Noveria was not housing a human prisoner!"

"_The videos do not lie!"_ Jack snarled back. "You have one chance to convince me you are not planning to attack humanity, councilor, one chance or we will remove our help and let the enemy that we have been safeguarding you from invade your very doorsteps! The Zuul destroyed your precious Noveria, and tore apart your very fleets. We came to your rescue, did we not? Next time…_we might be late_."

Silence stretched thin.

"What should we do, to convince Solforce?" Tevos was the first to speak, her voice barely hearable.

"You will brand Saren and Matriarch Benezia as traitors. You will actively hunt for them. You will grant our fleets passage through Citadel space, and finally, we expect two thousand tons of Eezo to be delivered to Omega before the end of the week."

"Two thousand…tons?" Sparatus' voice was filled with disbelief. "That would be…what the Hierarchy produces in one year! It's preposterous!"

"That or you will be explaining to your citizens just what humanity is guarding you from, Councilors. And the fact that Humanity is leaving you to fend off for yourself will just be the icing on the cake, I suppose."

"You baited us." Valern stated. "Noveria had Matriarch Benezia. Communications were cut. They returned with two fleets battling and a destroyed planet. No survivors. Cannot claim Solforce attacking planet."

"Why would we?" the Director remarked. "Because it had Geth presences on it? How could we know about that?"

"Council compromised." Valern pointed out. "Spectres compromised."

The Director just smiled. "Well…that is your opinion."

"I agree that there is irrefutable proof of Saren's betrayal." Valern wasn't done speaking, as he apparently added. "Spectres privileges will be revoked."

"Very well," Sparatus spoke next. "We will hunt for Saren."

"No need," the Director remarked. "We are doing that already."

Tevos' hologram stood up, her right finger pointed at him.

"You _knew_ from the beginning!" she accused.

"Of course I knew!" the Director laughed. "Expect betrayals from your allies. Expect death from your enemies. Expect evil from those you think are friends."

"You…you never intended to give our words any weight, did you?" Tevos' question was laced with a slight fright, as Jack just smiled.

"Why listen to insects, when the battle is fought between Gods?"

_Feros_

Geth Cruisers bombarded the planet, as dropships brought the assault platforms down on the ground. Their mass effect cannons and torpedo strikes slammed against the hard crust of the world, tearing apart hundreds of kilometer of civilization within mere instants. The synthetics didn't stop, calibrating the precision of their shots to the meter.

The Mass Relay showed signs of activities on their sensors. They barely acknowledged it that their signals were scrambled.

"Obey Solforce," a Geth platform nearby quoted. "Obey."

Their cruiser slammed against the other, both detonating as their reactor was ordered to reach critical mass.

"Tell me something I don't know," John Shepard spoke from his holo-tank, as the alert messages rammed through his skull one after the other.

"Forward lasers ready for fire," Edi remarked. Blasts of red flew and pierced the nearby cruiser. The Leviathan, as if an angry God uncaring for the ants near him, simply sailed through the deep darkness of space slamming particle beams and laser blasts the size of small houses against the Geth's fleet.

A Psionic push slammed an incoming Dreadnought against three cruisers, the ship rolled to starboard, avoiding deftly five mass drivers' shots. In the Holotank, Shepard swam graciously with his hands pushing through the fleet he commanded.

Squadrons dog-fighted against the Alpha Cruiser, who was firing back with its point-blank defense while protecting the assault shuttles landing on the planet. The Geth's own fighters cared little for survival, as they more than once simply decided to crash one against the other just to take out a single assault shuttle from the ensuing blast.

His left hand pushed and tapped on a holographic keyboard. The Alpha's missiles exploded from the point blank of the Geth Cruiser tagged near the space-port. The Beta's however passed through and shook the enemy ship long enough for the assault shuttles to make it into the planet's gravity.

As the shuttles pierced the atmosphere and began to descend, John relaxed slightly.

He swept his right hand horizontally, bringing up the Beta's orders. Pointing at a Geth Dreadnought whose engines had been torn apart, he ordered the boarding party to land on it. Letting the boarders go, he turned his attention to the accelerating cruisers that were on a collision course against the Leviathan.

He widened his eyes as he thrust both hands against the upcoming vessels. Storms and hails of laser rays dashed in space, one after the other slamming and chiseling away at the Geth incoming. Explosions rocked the first Geth Cruisers as the onslaught continued.

Twisting the ship's axis, readying for the second volley from the other side, he barely controlled himself as the Lieutenant activated the thrusters to redirect the ship's engines slightly to the side. Mass Driver slugs sailed in the spot where an instant later the engines would have been, together with torpedoes.

The battle bridge fired back in his place, the particle beam connecting with the forward destroyers and tearing in their fleet leaving behind explosions that quaked through the Leviathan.

"_We are Solforce_!" John screamed, as he nearly punched the glass of the holotank, activating the sideways missiles that ended up slamming against the head of the closest Dreadnought on the collision course.

Two cruisers still managed to pass through, one of them so badly wounded it crashed against the metallic plates of the Leviathan and detonated at point-blank range.

"Turrets in forward starboard side expelled! Hull breached! Pressurizing!" he yelled the order as the AI executed it with immediate speed. "Redirect power to self-defense systems! Alert marines! All hands on deck! Prepare for counter…"

The second cruiser crashed and broke through, ending up bringing the Leviathan away from its plotted course and making it end up on a collision course with the planet itself.

"REDIRECT ENERGY TO SIDE THRUSTERS! Assault team! Take that fucking Cruiser out of my ship!"

"Xavier module!? Prepare for a repair order on our flank soon!"

John breathed as he heard the patting sound of feet near his position. He looked as marines encircled his tank, to stand guard with their rifles positioned near the only entrance of the Holotank area, the true heart of the ship.

_Liara_

They had given her armor. They had told her where the gun had to be held when at rest and when armed.

They had told her to follow and never remove her suit.

She had no idea what she was doing, following these human soldiers to battle, but apparently they knew and they believed she would know.

Goddess, she had never held more than a gun in her hand before, and now this rifle…this rifle seemed like second nature to her. She felt like a Turian. "Suit's air is recycled forever," Ashley Williams spoke next to her. She had no idea if fate hated her or liked her, but apparently she had been entrusted to the same soldier _again_.

"Thrusters on the back: don't forget to use them to glide in space," she added as she tied her belt to a steel cable near a door. "We're going space-side, bastards!" she screamed then to the rest of the marine team. The door slid open a second later, and vacuum caught the little air remaining in the depressurized room.

Space was filled with silence. It suffocated her to watch ships crash and explode near her without actually hearing them. At least on the Asari ships a small VI program was always set to let noises be heard when something flashed by in front of the visors. Maybe it wasn't realistic, but it helped deaden the unnerving tension that something the size of a house might be coming to crash against you…and you wouldn't even hear it coming.

Ashley grabbed her hands and pushed herself off the sides of the Leviathan with practiced ease. The rest of the marine compartment followed her, and as the small company made its way to the upper side of the Geth Cruiser's plating, Liara couldn't help but be awed by the sheer amount of guts the humans possessed.

Even Turians would be wary to actually adopt a strategy of boarding without pods an enemy ship, and yet the humans did it as if it was second nature, or as if they sincerely believed nothing would go wrong. The Geth's Gardian laser fired precise bursts on the falling marines, tearing three apart before the rest could land right next to the turrets in question and disable them with explosive charges.

By the time her magnetic boot touched the exterior of the enemy cruiser, awe had been replaced by sheer terror. It was as if these men didn't care if their fellow soldiers died like flies for seemingly suicidal orders. There was no recrimination in the coms for the order given. Even as more laser fire brought down more and more marines, the rest fought on without the minimum care.

It was as if they literally believed they could not lose.

She didn't realize she had been firing until she found herself ejecting the clip and inserting a new one. Was this the 'genetic knowledge' Ashley had spoken of? Was this the reason the others didn't even seem to care about their losses? She was pushed down as a laser bolt passed slightly over her head, nearly nicking her suit's helmet. She turned to thank the soldier, only to see a gaping hole of flying intestines and blood in the place of a chest.

She would have screamed, had she held any air in her lungs.

She was slammed against a torn turret by another marine that tackled her, bringing her out of the firing area and in cover.

"Are you listening to me or not soldier!?" Ashley's voice cut through her panic-induced shock, forcing her to mutter.

"Oh Goddess. _Goddess_…he's dead. He's _dead_."

"We've got a useable breach!" Ashley remarked through the coms. "Converge on my location!"

The Gunnery Chief fired upon the white charred plates of the broken turret, before slamming her right shoulder against it and creating a passage. "Grenade in the hole!" she flung a small round thing within, before waiting for the blast. Once it happened, the tremors lasting just a mere instant, the Gunnery Chief jumped through the tear first, soon followed by three other marines.

Liara hesitated only one second.

She was falling inside the Geth cruiser barely a minute after the last crumbling bit of cover exploded in a shower of sparks.

Within the cruiser, dead Geth were laying in pools of white blood all across the corridor, delivering to her a sure-fire way of reaching for the rest of the 'team'.

She began to run across the sinuous and aesthetically pleasant corridors, now filled with torn apart bodies of Geth destroyed in the most gruesome of matters. Many had been shot, but a few had their heads torn and their legs snapped, before having their chests cracked by powerful blows.

She didn't hear the sound of gunfight, but she saw the glimpse of red belonging to a brawler suit near the end of the corridor, and barely managed to near it when a Geth, red and far bigger than all the others, slammed against the armored marine and broke the visor of the brawler suit.

She instinctively conjured her Biotics.

Liara imagined that, had there been air, they would have heard an extremely loud snapping sound as the Geth Prime was torn in two equal parts, both flying away in separate direction.

"Well done!" Ashley's voice reached her, as she found herself running towards the soldier with the fractured visor. "Leave him! He's going to die anyway!"

"Can't we seal his helmet!?" she rebuffed her, looking at the man who was clawing at his own armor's neck.

"No," a bullet tore through the man's face. A bullet fired by Ashley's own gun. It was the second time Liara watched from such close range a gory scene…but this time, the killer had been human. This…this was like watching the ferociousness of the Krogans.

"What are you doing!?" she screamed at the woman, grabbing her arm or at least trying to. She was rammed against the wall a moment later, by a masterfully executed counter-lock.

"We have to finish this fast! We'll send a team to collect his body later on! First we win, then we can dilly dally!"

"You murdered him!"

"We don't have time for this shit," Ashley snapped, nodding to the other two marines who proceeded ahead. "What the hell did they feed you? You're Solforce! Act like it!"

Liara would have wanted to scream that she wasn't, but even if she did…she wouldn't probably survive, would she?

"I…I can't…understand."

"Look," Ashley's hands firmly settled on the Brawler Suit's shoulder pads of Liara. "I'll tell you later, after all of this is done and we're back on the _Normandy_. Understood?"

She nodded meekly, her eyes shut as she was slapped on the side of the brawler suit and handed her rifle back. "Now follow me and watch my six."

Liara nodded. She could watch the woman's back. They began to walk through the corridor littered with Geth bodies, before coming to stop in a circular hall which ended straight where the Mass Effect core of the Geth Cruiser stood active.

There was no sign of the two marines who had gone first.

Liara felt a disturbance above her, an intense jolt of pain that made her recoil to the side and probably saved her life. The lifeless body of a marine was flung down from the ceiling, which resulted in her opening fire a moment later against a strange four legged Geth creature that had been walking upside down till then.

Ashley saw her fire and did the same, before a few sideways metal plates shifted aside, to reveal incoming Geth Platforms.

"Warmind! Warmind!" Ashley screamed something that to Liara's ears seemed gibberish, but it was then that she just went with the flow and slammed both of her hands forward. Nothing happened.

She felt drained.

She felt completely and utterly tired, even as the white machines that had never left the Perseus Veil before advanced on her, she felt completely and utterly spent.

It was then that she felt it, it was some sort of shudder that travelled across her entire soul. It was some sort of scream of war and anger that seemed to rise from the bottom of her throat, but was instead something that she realized…that she realized was scattered across the entire empire of Solforce. It was the scream of the Psions who interlinked one with the other, who could sense and feel each and every little and tiny thing that walked and believed, and yet at the same time they couldn't.

It was the thing of a millisecond, like watching the passing and fleeting instant of a snowflake melting on the tip of one's own warm fingers. The feeling was gone, but there no longer were Geths on the side of the cruiser —only giant holes like the ones of the hospital. Like the ones that she had created.

The Mass Effect core destabilized, before being spaced out not a moment too soon as it detonated —sending debris and rubble to scatter across the darkness of space and slamming her and Ashley away from the Cruiser and into the middle of nowhere.

The torn remains of the Cruiser seemed to animate then, and Liara watched with fascination as the very steel plates of the _Normandy_ apparently came alive and pushed away the cruiser, repairing them along the way.

It was something akin to magic.

No wonder humans believed themselves superior. They could repair things with their mere thoughts. Not even the strongest of biotics possessed that sheer mental will.

It was…

Astonishing.

And as she stood there, floating in deep space, fascinated from what she was seeing, a lurking sense of horror reached for the base of her spine.

Was this…

Was this what the Council was going to fight?

It was impossible. The Council would never win against the might of Solforce, and…

She winced in pain as her head seemed to explode from a monstrous headache. The Council had a large enough fleet to survive the war of attrition, certainly, and…

No, they didn't.

Yes, no, maybe…

Genetic knowledge clashed against her very own thoughts.

So that was why…That was why Ashley didn't seem to care about the victims or the dead marines. She couldn't.

It wasn't just genetic knowledge.

Solforce wasn't simply following orders…

They were slaves bound to a single will.

And their master could be none other than the Director himself.

She shuddered.

This wasn't going to end well no matter which side she leaned on.

Blood…

Blood would flow.

**Author's notes**

**And done.**

**Next chapter, landing on Feros and seeing who Subject Zero is.**


End file.
